What I'm doing with my life

Hello blogosphere! I don't post here nearly often enough. Right now, that's because I fear I'd just sound like a depressed broken record, but I'm getting to the point where I have to do something and I have to do it soon (and I really should have done it months ago) and I can't stand to hear myself being depressed and beaten down anymore.

I'm making plans.

Always a bad idea, I know, since nothing ever goes according to plan, but I have to do something or I'm going to just accidentally jump off a cliff or something. In Florida, which means I'll have to build a cliff and then accidentally jump off it. Which is too much trouble.

I've been applying for real-life jobs and online writing jobs left and right and I'm struggling to maintain faith that I actually know what I'm doing there, but it gets a little easier every time to put myself up for positions I really want. It's not that I don't think I can do the jobs so much as it's that I'm afraid of getting the job I want and then failing and being right back here. But I can't possibly do more than another year or so of a job I know I'll hate just because I need the money. I can't. I'll die in some fundamental way, and I won't become one of those beaten down, hateful waitresses that are all over TV, because I doubt some rich millionaire will fall for me and bring me back to the land of the living the way they do on TV and romcoms. Real life isn't that nice to me.

But what I'm really doing is trying to set up my life the way I want it. It started when I discovered Puttylike and Rightbrain Rockstar and then all the other people who are doing just that out there, and suddenly I was hopeful again. There really are people out there doing what I want to do. And they're successful at it! Which means I can do it, too, once I figure out how.

Right now, I'm looking at the list of things I like doing and trying to formulate an overarching theme, while pinpointing the life I actually want to be living. In no particular order, here's what I do know:

• I love writing more than I love any other job I've done, and I have Ideas I want to pursue there
• I love embroidery and silversmithing, and I want to make pretty things for peoples lives
• My dream house is not really a house so much as a collection of all those little movable houses that green designers keep putting gorgeous pictures of all over the internet--so I can take it with me and go anywhere
• I don't want to live in Florida anymore
• I do want a garden, even if the garden, too is portable--and maybe especially if it's portable
• I need to get some stamps in my passport before I go insane
• I need to work online because offices make me sad, but a good office is a different matter entirely
• I'm tired of being solitary, but any non-solitariness needs to happen on my own terms or I'm just going to feel smothered and bitter again
• I have far too much emotional investment in television, which means I need to make more of a living off it so that the investment matches the income
• I really, honestly love making video games that tell fun stories
• The Where Should I Live? test told me I should move to Bartimore--or Minesota, but I think Baltimore is more reasonable
• I like making lists and paperwork and handouts more than anyone else I've met
• I need sunlight to finction
• I am not a morning person, and I'm less each time I wake up in the morning
• I want to take up piano again, and learn to sing
• I'm so tired of being non-creative in large parts of my life that I feel like I could burst into flames--I'm already diagnosed as semi-dysfunctionally-rightbrained, and that isn't going to change so I should figure out how to use it

And that's what I have to work with

Space Gardening and you

This article in Utne says: "Researchers suspect that space gardens won’t be the primary source of sustenance on galactic missions, but fresh-picked vegetables will be a welcome addition to the cycle of processed and packaged meals.
“Along with reducing trash and launch mass requirements, such crops would give astronauts a little diet variety and psychological lift,” writes Witze. After all, even astronauts love to eat local."

It's a great little article with a good link to the source, and that's great for my research purposes, but I'm just left with the question: Why can't astronauts grow all their own food? The ideas exist for making frakking skyscraper farms, and most of the basic tech has already been developed. If new tech needs to be developed, it has a reason to get made right here. If astros do it, then other people can, too, and a ship headed to Mars is not really so different from a skyscraper. Meat might be a problem, but soy grows just about everywhere as far as I know, and there are plenty of plant-based forms of protein.

And if they're really planning a colony on Mars, wouldn't it be a jump-start to that colony's survival to already have plants that are alive and growing? Rather than starting from scratch when they get there?

I do agree with the psychological boost, though. Plants are proven to be soothing--we're wired to unwind in nature. Plus, they will give people something to do in the long stretches of time between needful emergencies (if all goes well). Maybe they can set up a whole hydroponics bay, and each astronaut can grow something just for pleasure in a corner of it, something not necessarily needed for food?

I'm pretty sure this is the wave of the future. I have a basically science-fictional, forward-looking mindset, and I think if the tech is there, if the chance to use it is there, we should all jump on that bandwagon early and enthusiastically before we have to scramble on out of dire need later. I mean, if it works on the way to Mars, then it'll work in orbit, which should be much easier, really. We could have space-farms feeding space colonies. We could claim all the living room this breeding species needs. So lets go do it.

Panic Attacks

So it happened again last night. That's two in the last week and a few of the lower-level roving sort in between. Someone said something a little mean to me and it just uncorked, like, half a years' worth of doubt and fear and sadness and annoyance, and I cried for two hours straight, maybe longer. Then spent two hours watching Sherlock to distract myself, and then another hour and  a half not sleeping.

This is what it's like when they're bad.

I know that there are triggers, and I generally know what they are-- certain foods, too much caffeine combined with too much stress, not eating well, being low on vitamins, depression, not writing enough-- but I hadn't realized that it was this bad. It seemed like I was coping, that I was pushing through and everything was fine, and then last night I just fell through the ice and couldn't find the way back up for a really long time.

It's not pleasant, dear readers. But I think I can ease it.

I'm lessening up on the tea / only drinking herbal until I even out again. I'm going to try to eat better, though I don't know how until I can get some income flowing. I'm going to write more; I haven't been writing enough, and it weighs on me and keeps me from emptying my brain and processing things. I'm going to flood my system with brain-friendly vitamins today and for the next few days. I'm going to try to get some time in for meditating. I'm going to try to sleep better.

I've had this condition long enough that I know I can do it. But the day after a bad attack always feels like looking up a steep mountain, and I really just want to hibernate until that mountain erodes to flat land.

End mope.