I'd Rather Be Blogging

It has been 4 weeks since my last post. An entire month. I do not like that, but there is a reason for this. And now, without much further ado, here goes another random rambling from me, Stacie P. See, the story goes like this...

Newly relocated back to my home near New Orleans, Louisiana, I am comfortably living with family, so I have no rent to worry about until I find a job; I am in what the U.S. Chamber of Commerce calls the #1 export city in the U.S., so hooking up a job with a French export company shouldn't be that hard; and I'm surrounded by family and friends who have welcomed me back home in the warmest possible way.

There shouldn't be a BUT here...

And yet there sort of is. (Like how I avoided the word but did the same thing? That's a bit like what I do in life... more on that later.)

So, at the very same time, I'm searching for a job, desperately grabbing at the air everyday, hoping to get a brief sensation of stability - some days feeling happy, some days hopeless, while still other days cautiously wondering "Why am I back here?" Maybe with all the transitions happening at once, this is normal. I know nothing of what is normal or not, so let's assume it is.

I've said before that it's ok to not be ok, and that stands true. We are all a mess, just in different ways, and that's alright. For me, the problem runs a tad deeper than that still. I can't be ok with a particular neurosis that is keeping me in limbo at the moment, the name of which is Anxiety. The truth is, everything is going according to plan, but it's still scary at times, and this is where my unwelcome tag-along friend shows up.

I do have certain avoidance tactics outlets for my anxiety, though. I have been known to paint on the rare occasion, write a blog here and there, go for a jog, spend copious amounts of time on Twitter, and other things like this. Things that are fun for me or that make my mind go elsewhere... those are good things for Stacie. The only problem comes when I realize that my strategy has a glaring flaw: it doesn't actually help me. It really is just a very creative way to trick myself (see note above on not calling things what they are) into thinking that I'm making progress on something (e.g. the painting is coming along, I wrote another blog, I worked out, I caught up with my buddies, etc.). And those things that still need accomplishing or dealing with are still there.

It might sound like I'm talking about procrastination, but this is not necessarily true. And even if it were, I likely wouldn't admit it. But I digress. The truth is, when I make myself a prisoner of my mind and become overwhelmed with the totality of all that's in there, I'm hard pressed even to self-soothe with my "outlets." Now THAT is bad. When you can't even work on the fun things because all of it starts to look like one giant, overwhelming, insurmountable mess. So that is why I haven't been blogging.

Meanwhile, somewhere in my mind I know that moving here was the right decision, that I am going to find a job, that I will be fine. My obstacle is my brain. I live inside my head. So, this is me fighting that imprisonment, trying to get out of there. I just had to take a step toward really feeling like I'm ok and doing something I really enjoy doing, which is write. And I'm giving myself grace for not writing every week this summer like I had planned because I do have a lot on my plate, and I am only one person - and not a perfect one, at that. And that is ok.

I don't think this post will make sense to everyone who reads it. Hell, I'm not so sure it makes complete sense to me, but I know now why I needed to write it. So, now that I've completed my pep talk (to me), where's that resume at... :)