That’s the best way I think I can describe the past week. Realizing that I need to make serious changes, losing sleep over the things I’m NOT doing to help my job situation, making plans… and then just somehow letting things slip away.

I’ve been trying to get back into therapy, but it’s been a slog trying to find someone local who won’t cost an arm and a leg, or worse yet, someone I’ll get to like working with, but our schedule will be so sporadic it’ll be damned near pointless. My difficulty is I highly suspect I have bipolar disorder and I want to know what I can do to get my mind right so I stop imagining doing things and get to ACTUALLY doing things that don’t hurt me.

I was watching an Anti-MLM video (multi-level marketing, NOT men-loving-men as some think on YouTube) and one person explained how they got super absorbed into an MLM and how fast they poured the money in. They said that much of their frantic purchasing to keep their stock up happened during their worst highs of their manic-depressive episodes. That mania helped her just keep spending and getting that euphoric rush.

And that hit me hard. Because sometimes my bank account doesn’t budge, and at other times I think of the cool stuff I’d love to have, and I go on a shopping spree. I have to cringe now and bow my head in shame a bit because I’m on the raggedy edge financially, but there’s a part of me that insists “just a little more.”

And when I did some digging, I found that impulsive spending habits are generally an issue those with bipolar disorder might deal with as one of their behavioral tendencies. I’d do it in fits and starts before, but I’m supposing after all the listlessness and stress of the past few years, it’s like a top that’s begun to wobble and is about to fall over, spinning out of control til it ends and there’s nothing left. My emotions have become a pendulum going each direction, but the lower depressive side tends to linger the most. The manic, euphoric, gotta-get-it-done side burns out so quickly and then the comes the decline. I have some neat mugs and some cool stuff to show for it, but the “kid at Christmas” feeling goes away so fast.

It’s even affected my time online. I have forced myself to dig back into the boards and try to be sociable (and heaven only knows how much I’ve missed the past month news-wise because of it). I just have emotionally shut down to feelings that weren’t shame or euphoria and have avoided talking to most people more than a couple minutes at a time. Somehow I just became exhausted at the idea of talking for a while. I’m in the valley between the parts of my mind that want different things, and I look at both, but can make no decisions. I am spending time this week changing that, because things cannot continue as they have. I have bills to pay, and I want to get back to working (and enjoy the hell out of it).

I’m sure the weather the past week and change hasn’t helped much. Too damned wet to be outside and working (even when it’s NOT raining) and the weeds have grown so fast everything is terrible. But too soggy to pull weeds and I need better tools than what I’ve got (that was the ONE purchase I made that I’ll defend–some hand weeders so I can get in close and cut them out instead of pulling and almost yanking the good plants out, too). And my garden is a wreck. I wanted so badly to take care of it this week, but then here came the rain and the little progress I made was practically smothered in two days.

But the weather is only an impediment to SOME things I’ve needed to do. I could’ve worked on others. But instead, I had my “busy-making” tasks, that are kind of like re-arranging messes and then looking around to see that nothing actually got put in a good or proper place. You know you did something, but it wasn’t anything useful in the end.

Though I’m sure it wasn’t quite THAT pointless… and bizarre. (Thanks, giphy).

And that’s made it all worse. Even today I went out and got some more notebooks (the school supply sales going on and all) because I’m using them for writing prompts and writing notes. But though that would be a help and I would have easy reference regarding ideas… right at this moment, it’s more of a stall tactic. I’ve been developing an awful lot of those lately, and I hate it. Some things could get done and be beneficial, but they don’t have to be done right away. I’m gonna end up sitting on my ass wasting time for years at this rate if I don’t get my act together.

And that includes my diet. I have to knock out some cholesterol and kick the junk food to the curb (especially the eternally crave-able fried stuff I can’t seem to keep out of my freezer). I have plenty of good food I should be eating in my fridge, and I don’t really even like the taste of most “convenience foods” from the freezer anymore.

But addictions don’t make sense and are hard to beat. Just wish I could be addicted to something nice like vegetables and fruit, exercise and inventing… something else.

My brain needs to get itself together and get me working again. Mentally and physically. And I am going to sleep this off a bit pretty soon and remind myself that tomorrow is a brand new day and I have things that need to be done. All the things I’ve put aside to “finish later” I just need to get back to and actually finish, not leave them to pile up while I work on my mindless “stalling” activities and then wonder why everything’s a disorganized mess when I was “so busy.”

Time to exercise that brain–the whole thing–and get it focused on what must be done. I want that big ol’ brain to get me thinking my way out of this funk and improve my life.

Yeeeesssssss! Brraaaaiiiinnnnnssssssss!!! Lovely lovely Brrraaaaiiiinnnnssssss!!!