I first learned to knit at an eating disorder conference. The presenter was using knitting as a metaphor for what recovery was like. It’s so difficult to figure out how to get started, or to think you’ve made progress, only to have to rip everything out. The presenter was totally addicted to knitting but clever. And it’s true. Knitting has taught me a lot about life. The blog post can be read here.
Find out why it took me 4 years to file for divorce after my second marriage. The blog post can be read here.
I think I would really enjoy living in paradise.
Although I do wonder sometimes if it would get boring after a while. I know some people who live at the beach say they hardly ever go, even though they moved there because they love the beach. It is no longer the place they fantasize about escaping to; it just becomes the place they live.
I know I said in my last post that perhaps things can only be extraordinary when you compare them to something ordinary. Maybe that doesn’t just apply to paradise. Maybe that applies to everything. A beautiful day. An exciting win. A perfect date. Maybe things can only be wonderful if sometimes things are terrible. At least that’s what I tell my clients as a way to help them appreciate sadness, anger, fear, and heartbreak.
Still, I’d like to give it a shot, just to make sure.
For me, in a perfect world…
I would have a place in Hawaii and Switzerland. And it wouldn’t take an entire day to get there.
It would be easy to find someone to date. And he would never drive me crazy.
Federer would always win.
The weather would always be perfect for tennis. And when it rained, it would do so after midnight.
I would have enough money to get awesome seats at any sporting event.
UVA would win the national championship in football and basketball in the same year.
My family and friends would always be healthy, happy, and safe. And so would I.
Every morning I would wake up feeling like something exciting was going to happen.
No one would make me feel ashamed that I woke up at noon.
Every book I read would be the kind that I never want to end.
And when it did, there would be a sequel that’s just as good as the first one. Maybe a whole series, even.
And then the author would write another series and that one would be just as good.
My blog would be widely read.
Some big-time publisher would approach me and tell me they want to turn my blog into a book.
I would be packing right now instead of procrastinating. And I would have put away my laundry last night instead of sleeping with all my folded clothes next to me in the bed.
I would be excited before a trip instead of stressed out about all of the things that I have to do before I leave.
I would not be depressed after the trip was over because there would be something new and exciting waiting for me when I got home.
Today I woke up at 6 am, which is crazy for me. I was all excited and couldn’t fall back asleep. There’s lots of good tennis on at Wimbledon today. My mixed doubles team plays tonight, and we have a good chance of winning. And all I have to do today is pack for my trip tomorrow, where I will get to play more tennis and spend time with my niece.
Maybe it’s not a perfect world, but we can still have moments of perfection. And this is one of them, because Federer’s match is about to start.
Despite the psychological energy conservation plan I came up with several months ago, I’m still struggling with the crash and burn problem.
I spent another weekend feeling exhausted and ended up canceling the plans I had been looking forward to. I no longer allow my inner critic to torment me by telling me that I’m just being lazy, because why would I be too lazy to go to a costume party and play tennis? Still, it’s frustrating to spend the entire weekend lying around the house watching TV.
To make matters worse, as soon as I have a little bit of energy, I try to do too much, because I feel like I’ve wasted so much time. And guess what happens? I burn out again, and the cycle repeats itself.
It helps that I have a blog where I have made public declarations about how I’m going to be more proactive about conserving my energy. And I have made some improvements. I am better at setting limits in my relationships. I try to go to bed earlier. I eat more mindfully. But there are other areas where I am still in denial. These include:
1. Hosting. I hosted a Halloween party that I obsessed about for weeks because I have a small place and I never cook and I had to do everything by myself since I’m single. Then my parents came up on Friday and we had another karaoke night, when ordinarily I would be spending the evening unwinding. For some reason, I didn’t think that trading rest for karaoke would affect my energy level.
2. Tennis. In my mind, tennis should not be tiring because it’s fun. In the summer I played 4-5 times a week, but now that I’m working, I only have the energy to play about 3 times a week, which my inner critic does not want to accept. But my body is like, too bad! That’s all I’m doing!
3. Football games. My brothers and I have season tickets, and this year they have been able to come to more games, so I really look forward to going. But it’s an all day affair that ends up affecting my entire weekend, because I don’t have much time to get anything done. Which means I’m really tired the following week. Again, this came as a surprise to me, even though it makes perfect sense.
4. Blogging. I know that blogging takes up energy, but once again, my inner critic is like, why should you be tired? You’re just sitting there typing and reading blogs. How hard can that be? You should be able to write 3 posts a week. But lately two posts a week is all I’ve been able to manage. Otherwise it starts to feel like a job rather than a hobby.
So I guess the lesson is that, while it’s important to have things to look forward to, fun things are tiring, too. Which is probably obvious to all of you, but it is somewhat of an epiphany for me. Guess I need to factor that into my energy conservation plan.
I first learned to knit at an eating disorder conference. The presenter was using knitting as a metaphor for what recovery was like. It’s so difficult to figure out how to get started, or to think you’ve made progress, only to have to rip everything out. The presenter was totally addicted to knitting but clever. And it’s true. Knitting has taught me a lot about life.
Last night I was working for several hours on this dress for my niece, only to have to rip out every row except one. Four hours of knitting for one row.
I only have myself to blame. It’s a complicated pattern where every stitch has to be accurate, and I knew I had messed up but I figured, it’s at the end of the row. It will be at the seam. I can make it work! I’ve made this mistake hundreds of times, and it always costs me in the end. In knitting and in life. This guy has trauma? Addictions? ADHD? Narcissistic Personality Disorder? No problem! I can fix him! I can make it work!
My problem is that I love complicated patterns. I love to be challenged. Most people find a pattern for a scarf that they like and they knit 5 of them. I, on the other hand, decide to knit something like a dress, which takes months to knit, and when I’m done I never want to see the pattern again.
I’m actually selling a few of the items that I’ve knit at The Stitchin’ Post. Even if they sell, the best I can hope for is to cover the cost of the materials, because I’m only making something like one cent an hour.
But that’s OK. I’m not doing it for the money. To me, patterns are more like puzzles to be solved, like Minesweeper or Sudoku. A pattern that I have already mastered is boring and no longer holds my interest.
I know this makes me unusual. When I was a kid I used to untangle balls of string for fun. Well, it also bugged me that the string was not in a usable form. But I got immense satisfaction out of being able to roll it up into a ball after the last knot was untangled. And it was kind of foreshadowing that I would love kitting later in life.
My relationships follow a similar pattern. I like a challenge–someone with all kinds of issues and baggage and diagnoses. I want to hear all about their problems, learn how they developed, and figure out how to solve them. That’s why I became a psychologist. But sometimes you need to cut your losses and start over, in knitting and in life. Sometimes I can’t make it work.
Several years ago I was talking to one of my colleagues about the demise of my first marriage and she said, “marriage is hard work, but it shouldn’t be like climbing Mt. Everest.” I thought, really? It sounded that bad? I guess I was so used to what my mom tried to do to make her marriage work that what I was doing paled in comparison. I thought that marriage was supposed to be that hard.
After my second marriage ended, a good friend who knows me well dropped some wisdom on me that helped me feel less like a loser. She knew the guy, since we all played tennis. She knew how hard I tried. And she said, sometimes you can try too hard. And that has always stuck with me. Sometimes I even use it as a mantra.
There is a reason for my desire for complexity in knitting and relationships. Freud called it a repetition compulsion. But these days neuropsychologists frame it in terms of rewiring of your brain. With so much trauma, mental illness, prejudice, and discrimination from being immigrants, my brain was wired to be hypervigiliant of crisis. Hence, the “self-soothing” of trying not to blow up one of the 999 bombs in Minesweeper as a way to prepare me for sleep in my night owl post.
It’s for similar reasons that veterans come back from wars with PTSD. You’re so used to surviving, that doing something ordinary, liking picking from hundreds of different cereals at the grocery store while spending time with your family is unbearably boring. You’d rather sign up for another tour and figure out how to keep a bomb from blowing up in your face, like that guy from Hurt Locker. Who is also Hawkeye in the Avengers. A real sensation seeker.
But I digress.
I am learning how to recognize when I’m not at war, but nothing is going to change my desire for cognitive complexity. It’s like mental sensation-seeking. Some people climb Mt. Everest for fun, and I guess I like scaling psychological mountains and complicated patterns. So I’m knitting a dress for my niece for Christmas. Which I will work on again tonight.
1000 Voices for Compassion
