[277/365] broadcast me a joyful noise unto the times

[cosmolinguist]

To help me believe that things are in fact not as bad as I think they are when I think "things will always be this bad," I will note that today I got myself into a panic because I lost the little plastic wallet with my bus pass and railcard in it. I didn't notice until I sat down at the beginning of a seminar that I confess I didn't retain much of because a lot of my work was going to not having an anxiety attack. At the beginning I was very "I suck at everything, normally I'm so good at keeping track of things like this but lately I am the actual worst," etc.etc., but having done that kind of thinking so much yesterday I had a kind of sense-memory of reading all the nice comments.

I didn't remember the words diffrentcolours told me, "Nothing has been made worse, you just have a different problem to solve now," but I remembered how I felt when I read it. And pretty soon I could drag myself around to thinking "okay, I have a different problem now and yes I'd really rather I didn't have it, but I know what to do: I can go back to where I've been, I can ask if it's been found and handed in. I can afford to replace stuff if need be and pay for bus tickets and full-price train tickets in the meantime. It's annoying but it's okay." And it was okay: re-tracing my steps worked.

All that adrenaline kicked my ass though and it ended up being perhaps a good thing that Stuart was too poory for me to visit after uni as I'd planned; I went home and crashed for a couple hours (after some tea and chocolate and watching this week's Good Place with Andrew and the dog, all excellent self-care). Still need to decide if I can face Currybeer tonight.

Today's other headlines:

• on Monday instead of my lecture I get to go to an "employability" focus group for linguistics and English language students. I had to do a short paragraph saying why I'd like to be on it and mine was basically "I'm a mature student and I'm disabled, I've been difficult to employ so far so you better help me," heh. But nicer than that so they agreed to let me on it. I get £25 for two hours of this, and possibly food since it's at lunchtime!
• When I do see Stuart next, he has a mountain bike that, if I'm the right size for it, I can have. He got it off freecycle and did a lot of work on it. He assured me he'll still fix my other bike, but he likes mountain biking and it's something I'd like to do with him if I can
• My weirdo lecturer got back to me after I gave him both barrels about how last year's reading list was Not Good Enough and he explained that it was only last year's because he is still tweaking the course in this the third year it's being offered. He assured me he'll let me know of any changes to it as soon as; we'll see how that works but for now I'll take it.
• For that same class, forensic linguistics, we are again in semester-long groups. One person in mine was one from the last semester-long group project I had to do, and the other two are two friends who ask questions in class and are already worried about falling behind, a perrennial state of mind for me, so I think we'll be fine. The groups jostled around because my seminar is a lot smaller than it had been last week, and I don't know if that's just people not wanting to turn up at 9am, or if they've dropped the course.
• I'm feeling a bit wary of it myself: one of the groups has to do a presentation each week, on our solution to a problem given us in the lectures. There is so far no guidance on how tf to solve the problems (having been told "You can solve them in any way you want!" by the lecturers is no fucking good when we have never encountered this kind of task before!), but our tutor has taken pity on us and says she'll email us with some help. My group has signed up to do the first presentation, next week, so that should be interesting.

Think that's about it for today.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

Different problem to solve is genius reframing, thank you v much.

[momentsmusicaux]

Urgh, things like that are just extra hassle you don't need. Glad you found it again though.

[cosmolinguist]

He's a good project manager. :)

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, the timing seemed very unfair! And I'm usually very good at not losing things like this so when I do it really upsets me beyond all reason.

[mrs_leroy_brown]

ARGH DUDE, I am positively heaving with feels here. That horrible anxious moment where you've Lost A Thing What You Need and which Cost Money is *sings* the woooooorst! And I do it every time and also fall into "man you suck, why are you so scatty/useless etc." line of thought. I am so glad you found the plastic wallet but even happier to read that you were able to be kind to yourself - go Holly!

[cosmolinguist]

It is the worst! And my bus pass already disappeared just a few months ago so I felt like such a failure at the prospect of dealing with that again. Whereas with my railcard I felt like I'd have "wasted" two of the three years I paid for if I'd lost it now.

I wasn't feeling kind to myself at all, but I could imagine someone else being kind to me and me doing what they'd want me to. I realized that I didn't have to feel kindly toward myself, I just had to do what I would've recognized as kindness. If I treated kindness as actions rather than feelings. I could do it. And noticing that helped.

[mrs_leroy_brown]

I wasn't feeling kind to myself at all, but I could imagine someone else being kind to me and me doing what they'd want me to.

Excellent strategy, and one I always mean to do myself and forget. And whoa - mind blown here - thinking of kindness as actions rather than feelings...this is a game changer!

[silveradept]

The framing of "different problem" is pretty helpful in trying to avoid the spiral. I'll have to see if I can remember it the next time I get into a fury at myself about something similar.

[sfred]

<3

[tarasacon]

I often do the same thing, treating myself as I would treat a friend having the same issues.