Winter blues

[Ed. note: pay no attention to the gloominess of the following entry. Things are good (well, except for a flat tire) as you will see if you read to the end. But before you do, I just wanted to crow about the gorgeous new look around here. You (and I) have the brilliant and talented Yolanda Facio to thank. Thank you, Yo! ~LaVonne]

January 2, 2016

I am so frustrated and cranky the past few days, but especially today. Nothing seems right. I feel too crowded in this van. It’s cold. My skin itches. I have a headache. The dog, poor thing, can’t do anything right.

I just want to go home.

But this is home now. I couldn’t afford to go back to the apartment (where my son still lives and is thinking about leaving) if I wanted to. I have a van payment now and the apartment rent just went up a whopping 40%.

I don’t want to go back, of course, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once.

It would be so nice to be able to stand up and walk to the bathroom and close the door, or to walk to the kitchen and cook a meal, standing up. To be warm. To have running hot water. A shower (hell, a bath) whenever I want. I miss those things.

I know it’s just the cold getting to me. That and the overcrowded conditions in this van. It’s time to purge and reorganize so living in my small space is comfortable again. I have accumulated too much stuff.

But when it’s cold like this, I don’t want to do anything but burrow under the covers and go to sleep. Which I did for a while this afternoon, but then Scout kept whining and I finally unhooked her long lead and let her run. So of course, she found another dog to play with and Linda got concerned because she thought it was a huge dog that might hurt her so she called me to go rescue Scout from the big dog (which turned out to just be old and not in a playful mood.)

I shouldn’t have let Scout run off-leash, even though there are no rules against it here. Something always goes wrong when I do, and then I have to chase after her. Which doesn’t improve my mood.

The point is, I’ve been feeling depressed. That’s why I’m so crabby, why Scout is getting on my last nerve, why the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone, why I feel like crying.

Winter blues, I guess. What is it called — SAD? Well, there’s plenty of sunshine here, if I would just bask in it, but I’d rather stay in the van and look at my devices. Facebook, Kindle, check the weather again — you know the drill.

I am depressed because I no longer have any excuse to not write. I’ve been whining about all the obstacles to writing but now there aren’t any. Even Linda is leaving me alone most of the day so I can write. But I don’t.

I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, typing, “All work and no play makes LaVonne a dull girl. All work and no play makes LaVonne a dull girl. All work and no play makes LaVonne a dull girl. All work and no play makes LaVonne a dull girl. All work and no play makes LaVonne a dull…”

Promise I won’t try to break down any doors with an ax.

But there are things I want to have done. Notice I didn’t say “want to do.” I want to HAVE WRITTEN more books, to HAVE INTERVIEWED more vandwellers and posted them to the podcast — erm, I forgot the other goals I so ambitiously posted to Facebook yesterday. Oh yes, there they are:

2016 DREAMS AND GOALS

• write more books
• sell more books
• read more books
• podcast
  – interview vandwellers
  – edit interviews
  – tell stories
• narrate audiobooks
• travel

Ambitious much?

After posting that, I announced an epic road trip I want to take in the spring and summer, up the coast to Vancouver, across Canada, and back down through Minnesota, visiting friends and family along the way.

Sure, I want to do it. I want to do all of the above. But it’s too much, too overwhelming, too scary.

Hence: depression.

The answer, of course, is to just focus on one thing at a time.

===============

That was last night. Linda texted to say soup was on, homemade Mexican soup complete with warmed tortillas, and I wasn’t about to pass that up.

This morning, things look different. The depression and the headache are gone. Scout and I just got back from a fun walk in which we frolicked and played. I even ran a few steps now and then because she enjoyed it so. And so did I.

I have a positive outlook again, and a solution to my problems: one thing at a time.

It’s hard to manage when you are ADD (or a complete flake, as I like to call it) but it can be done. What you do is actually DO the one thing instead of stopping yourself because there is that other thing (and that OTHER thing) over there that you want to do too and you’re afraid you won’t finish because you never do.

You do the one thing until you get stuck or lose interest (temporarily, always remember it’s just temporary) and then you go do that other thing, and so on. Just keep going around the circle, making small progress on each thing, until you get back to the first thing.

Scratch that — it’s not a circle, it’s a spiral. You are constantly moving forward and upward.

Yes, people will get frustrated with you. Live with it.

Don’t worry about finishing before you allow yourself to move on. That is a recipe for paralysis, as I have shown. Just move on. Or jump back and forth. Find your own rhythm, your own pace. You can always pick up where you left off.

Today, my one thing is the van.

I’ve been putting off tearing it apart and putting it back together because it seems like such a big job but it isn’t really, not when you compare reorganizing and purging a much bigger space, like a house or apartment. It’s just a van full of too much stuff, too disorganized to function in, and it’s stopping me from getting anything on my list done. And that has been making me depressed.

Time to make room for my dreams.