Learning by doing

Today it is suddenly clear to me that living well is a skill that can only really be learned by doing, just like any other physical or mental skill.

I would never expect to learn how to tango, or weld, or write a speech just from reading a book (much less an article on the internet). I know that learning these skills takes practice, in order to learn all the parts that cannot be put into words and to commit the necessary reflexes and instincts to memory.

So why do I keep thinking that I can learn how to live by reading? That understanding a lesson on the page is the same as understanding it through experience? Why am I surprised that I keep coming back to the same lessons again and again, though I'd thought I'd understood them already?

Another lesson learned, and I hope that I've learned this one as a feeling in my bones, and not just as words in my head. And, as so many times before, I find myself coming back to one of the most basic lessons of all: patience.

For the first time in my life, new year's goals

For the first time in my life, I'm setting goals for the new year.

New Year's was always just another holiday for me: an excuse for a party, with a few traditions. Mostly it meant buying a new planner, and having trouble writing the correct year for a while. Sometimes I tried to make resolutions, halfheartedly, because it was something other people did, but I never really took them seriously.

Looking back now, I see that it was because school/work was always my highest priority, and so I always had a goal in my mind already: get good grades; get into a good university; be a good student; get into a good PhD program; get my PhD; get a postdoc position where I can do my own research; be a good scientist. Everything else was extra, low priority. (None of this was quite conscious - if you had asked me, I would have said something vague about wanting to be happy. But when I made decisions, school and work always won out over other things.) At the end of each year, I knew where I was headed next, I had a goal, and I wasn't really looking to change anything in how I lived my life.

This year is different! For the first time, I don't have much of a plan for what's coming next. I have no idea what I'll be doing in a year, or even where I'll live. It's scary and exciting. It's an actual new beginning. And for the first time, it feels right to me to set goals for the year to come.

So here goes.

Broad aims for this year:

1. Healing. I'm going to continue working on accepting myself, being kind to myself, and giving myself space and time to heal from years of telling myself what I should be and what I should be doing. By the end of the year, I would love to feel like I know and am proud of who I am.

2. Doing. I have a lot of dreams and ideas that have been sitting around and waiting because I've been scared of failure or unable to choose where to start. This year I'm going to stop dithering and do as much trying, failing, and learning as I can.

And some specific goals I'll try to follow:

1. Drawing every day. To improve technically, learn to deal with artistic insecurity, and figure out what my deal is with art (do I want to do it to earn money, be great, get recognition? or just for the pure enjoyment of it?).

2. A blog post every week. To improve technically, stop being scared, figure out if I really want to be a writer, and help myself learn and think.

3. One main project each month, and no more. With all those dreams and ideas, I get overwhelmed easily. I need to focus, but I also need to switch from project to project so I don't get bored. This is just another attempt to organize myself in a long line of (mostly failed) attempts, but I am still hopeful that it will work!

A new year, a new me. I'm looking forward to it.

Golden memories and unreasonable expectations

Often, when I'm not feeling so great, I start to wish that I would have everything sorted out and under control, and that I could just be happy and content and everything would be easy.

And sometimes I think back to a time that, from my current vantage point, seems like it was like that. When I was in university, or when I worked in Utah for a few months, or when I went to Crete on holiday with friends. I remember the sunshine, the happy moments, the relaxed moments, and it's like a video or photo where the light is golden and everything looks beautiful and perfect.

And I think, I want that. I want to feel like that right now. And I feel frustrated, that instead I am lost in my todo lists and chores and weird dreams from the night before, and the sad drama we watched on TV last night, and all sorts of uncertainties and fears. 

I think what I need to remember is that those golden times must have been the same. When I try, I remember too the times of lovesick anguish, social awkwardness, exhaustion, boredom, fear, overwhelm, and frustration. My journals are full of them. It's easy to dwell on the lovely times and pass over the harder times.

So maybe I never will reach that golden time I hope for, "when I figure stuff out and start to be properly happy." Maybe there's just the here and now, with its ups and downs, pains and joys. It sounds sad, but it feels freeing to accept. Maybe if I stop being disappointed that life isn't easier, I'll find the contentment that I'm looking for.

I'm going to try to stop expecting happiness

I haven't given up on being happy, or anything like that. I've just realized that, once again, I am getting in my own way by having too-high expectations for myself.

In this case, the unreasonable expectation is that I will be happy all the time. Content, satisfied, joyous, all of that. Maybe I've read too many websites, blog posts, and articles about how to be happy, or maybe I've just approached the goal of getting out of depression in my usual extra-high-achieving way. Either way, it's a problem, because happiness is not so straightforward, at least not when you're struggling with depression.

What I've realized is that for me right now happiness is like my black cat Miša (Misha). If I chase after her, she runs away; I can often grab her if I'm quick, but she won't be interested in staying. On the other hand, if I sit quietly, she'll come settle in my lap and fall asleep. She's not always at my side - she comes and goes following her own cat schedule - but if I let her be, she'll spend most of her day hanging out near me of her own accord.

I've been getting frustrated at not being happy all the time, and thinking that I must be doing things wrong: that I must not be happy because I'm not following a consistent routine, because I'm not doing enough exercise, because I'm getting up late every day, because some days I don't get dressed or do anything useful. So I've been pushing at myself all the time to do better, try harder, find the trick to make myself happy.

Now I think that I've been going at it all wrong. Why have I been expecting myself to be happy all the time? The more I think about it, the less I think that's a reasonable expectation for anyone, much less someone still figuring out depression.

So what's the plan now? To live, and be grateful for the good feelings that I have - feeling comfortable, feeling safe, feeling warm, feeling free - and do my best to accept the harder feelings that I'm dealing with - feeling uncertain, feeling insecure, feeling afraid. And when, out of the blue, I find that I am happy, to enjoy it while it lasts, but not try to hold on. And definitely, definitely not to beat myself up for not being happy!

note: Part of the thinking process that led to this post was started off by this article by Glennon Melton called Don't Carpe Diem that I found super insightful (especially because it uses mountaineering as a metaphor for life!). I recommend it.

Over and over again, the answer is patience

I used to think I was patient: I don't mind waiting at a doctor's office; I like lots of repetitive, mindless tasks, like shelling beans; I like slow movies, slow books, slow stories.

But now I've noticed that when I can't see the end - when I don't even know if I can reach the end I'm striving for - I'm impatient to the max. I want to be healthy, I want to understand myself, I want to do good, and I worry that I should be all of that already, right now. I want to know how to live my life, and I want to know now.

Today the big uncertainty revolving through my mind is how to balance enjoying life with doing good. How do I decide how much effort to devote to each? How good a life do I deserve? Is it right to indulge in luxuries when I could donate the money that pays for them to so many worthy causes instead? Is it even possible to figure out a balance?

I've worried about this before and I've looked for answers in books, articles, documentaries. So far I haven't found any. All I've found is individual, all-too-incomplete stories of other people's lives. Some sacrificed themselves for their work; some didn't.

Obviously there is no simple, one-size-fits-all answer. And from my struggles to figure this question out, it's clear that there is no easy answer just for me, either. For now, I have to accept that life comes with tough questions, like this one, that I may never solve. And that the best I can do is be patient, keep trying to figure things out, and struggle along - until one day, if I'm lucky, I realize that I'm living as I want to live.

Feeling overwhelmed

For me, one of the most difficult troubles I have in my day-to-day is feeling overwhelmed. It makes me not want to do anything; it makes me want to lie down, hide, lose myself in a book or TV or a film or the internet.

There are some little things I have tried to keep myself from feeling overwhelmed: to do lists, a daily schedule, starting the day with a treat like tea or a hot shower. They often help. But as I wrote yesterday, I'm thinking now that tricks like these, by their nature, are never going to be complete solutions.

I also have some strategies for addressing the problem of overwhelm in a deeper way. I am trying to let go of tasks that are on my list because I feel that I should do them, rather than because I need to do them or want to do them. I am trying to be more patient, to accept that progress takes time, and to expect less from myself each day. I am trying to focus on my top priorities, and to accept that there's only so much I can work on, or learn, or improve in myself at any one time. And I am trying to build more time into each day for resting, for quiet, and for being kind to myself.

Everything is helping, at least some of the time - the little tricks, the introspection, the attempt to live my life more slowly and in a more considered way. And yet, I still have so many difficult mornings, when getting up and starting my day seems so, so hard. When I go back to sleep even though I've slept more than enough, just because it's cozy in bed, and safe, and the idea of starting my day feels too big to deal with. So what now?

Now I think that, perhaps, this overwhelm is just a part of going through big changes, like the fear, insecurity, and vulnerability that are hanging around too. Now I think that, perhaps, sometimes, there is no solution, except to keep moving forward, and to have faith that things will get better. So that is what I am going to do. I am going to accept that I feel overwhelmed sometimes. I'm deciding that it's okay. I am going to be kind to myself, and let myself stay in bed each morning for another hour or two if that's what it takes, and not feel bad about it. And most importantly, I'm going to keep moving toward my dreams, one little step at a time, with faith that things will keep getting better, and that everything will be okay.