Behind The Eight Ball

It started back in August,

The transition from delivery driving to tutoring,

Too many emails back and forth,

Not enough time to make deliveries,

Three-week delay until my first tutoring paycheck.

I’m behind the eight ball

 

End of September,

Busy with tutoring,

Lots of balls moving around,

So stressed trying to keep things straight,

That I made a mistake.

I’m still behind the eight ball

 

Winter break,

No kids to tutor,

People are cooking instead of ordering,

No quarantines,

Less deliveries,

The balls stop moving.

I’m stuck behind the eight ball

 

Second semester,

The schedule is nearly full,

But I’m playing catch up,

I love this job, and I am good at it,

I just don’t have enough students,

To stay afloat,

The balls are moving, but not a single tap.

I’m stuck behind the eight ball

 

Spring Break,

Another slow week,

Trying to brainstorm another plan,

To replace delivery driving,

Every option is beyond my abilities,

The stress and anxiety builds,

Whoops, another mistake,

A ball rolls by without a touch.

I’m stuck behind the eight ball

 

The year is almost over,

An unexpected problem,

I’m not prepared for this,

My head is swirling in worry,

About what else could happen,

The balls have disappeared.

I’m stuck behind the eight ball

 

Looking at summer,

My mental health is a mess,

I’ve fallen behind on everything,

I need to take time to heal, to prepare for fall,

When the need for tutors will grow,

But first I have to find the other balls.

Because I’m still stuck behind the eight ball

 

And I can’t seem to break free.

The Three D’s

Remember two years ago, when I said the 20s were going to roar? 

Well, I didn’t mean a little virus was going to roar over us.  It’s been…quite a year.  No, quite a couple of years.

I love to spend New Years’ Day reflecting on the past year—and planning the next.  As I said in Bill’s This Time Next Year challenge, the lockdowns and furloughs and protocols have worn me down, and now, I am in the worst shape of my life, physically and mentally, since college.  Everything has fallen apart, and I feel completely broken.  And I am far from alone.

Despite all of the awful, I learned some very valuable lessons in 2021.  In February, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, finally understanding how my brain works.  I realized that all the time I have spent escaping into a dreamland was exactly what prevented me from chasing my dreams.  I wasn’t only using my dreams as an escape—I was using “self care” as an excuse to avoid the long, difficult pathway towards success. 

In these two years of ‘rona, I had forgotten what it was going to take….to live the life of my dreams.

Clearly, I need a reboot, and it starts with developing three qualities that all start with the letter D:

Determination.  Dedication.  Discipline.

Last year, I talked about the Grind, how to keep going when you’re tired or challenged or never believe you will succeed.  I had three goals, and while #blogsandcoffee has been a great success, I struggled to create a daily routine.  (Don’t even ask about the English accent.  I decided to start learning French instead.) 

The reason I failed at creating a daily routine—was that I wasn’t determined enough to be dedicated enough to have the discipline to make it happen.  I chose the instant gratification of dreams and indulgences, rather than working through the challenges from juggling so many balls in the air.

Did you know that people with OCPD struggle with multitasking?  Um, yeah.  I probably also need to learn how to say “no” more often….

Now, there are a lot of people reading this and thinking, “um, Erin, you are the most disciplined, dedicated person I know.  I mean, in high school/college/work/running you are so able to get it done.”

Well, I am…when it’s simple, like training for a marathon, or has triggered my compulsions, like writing this blog post, but once things get complicated, I can’t handle all that’s being thrown at me.  Like what we have to manage as an adult—work, home, finances, health, leisure—add in the stresses of covid, and I have lost my way. 

(I’m also really, really good at hiding my struggles.)

To succeed at this endeavor, I have to start simple, with one project I know I can do if I am determined, I am dedicated, and I am disciplined.  I need to appreciate the baby steps it will take to complete this project and do them, even when I’m tired or anxious or had a bad day.  It will be like filling a rain barrel with an eyedropper, so I have to use these three D’s to stay on track, progressing towards completion.

Once I have reached my goal with that first project, I repeat the process with another project, then another, and another, building my determination, my dedication, and my discipline with each iteration, empowering me to tackle increasingly difficult projects.

If I master these three D’s, perhaps I will have a daily routine by the end of the year, the first step towards the life of my dreams.

About Simone Biles and Mental Health

Finally, it’s the Olympic Games!  I remember getting so excited for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, watching the Opening Ceremonies while checking off the delegations on my world atlas.

That was five months after my mother sat us down to watch Torvill and Dean in Sarajevo, the only perfect Olympic ice dance performance in history.  Little did I know then that I would become an ice dancer myself, decades later.

It's not the Olympics, but definitely nerve-wracking!

We were glued to the television set those 16 days in the summer of 1984.  From Mary Lou Retton to Carl Lewis to the first women’s marathon, I loved all the Olympic sports we didn’t normally see on television, and like most kids, dreamed of being an Olympian.  Of course, it was pretty clear that I just didn’t have the athletic talent to get there, nor the dedication to do the same thing over and over and over again for years to achieve that dream.

Still, watching the Olympics became a regular tradition, and now having participated in both a Winter (figure skating) and Summer (marathon running) sport, it’s very special to feel a connection to the stories playing out on television.  I know what it’s like to face a panel of skating judges or trying to manage a hot, sunny race day.

This is what I will tell you, after two decades of athletic training:  it is HARD to be an Olympian.  You train day in and day out in relative obscurity to perform your best at one competition that only occurs once every four years. 

Or, if the world shuts down due to a global pandemic, five years.  2020 was a terrible year to be an elite athlete.  Facilities closed and locked down.  Competitions cancelled.  And when they announced that the Olympics would be postponed, many couldn’t turn to the one thing they’ve done for decades to soothe their mind—practicing their sport. 

It’s been a very long fifth year for these athletes, and watching these Games, it’s very clear it is a very different Olympics.  Parents are watching from home.  Audiences are made up of media and fellow athletes—at least, those who are still competing as they are sent home as soon as their events are finished.  For the athletes, who are used to competitions being a certain way, it must be discordant, disruptive, and distracting to not have a full arena of cheering crowds—or more importantly, a hug from Mom and Dad before their event.

Like so many others, I was shocked that Simone Biles withdrew from the ladies’ team final due to a mental health issue, but once I saw her vault, it completely made sense.  Even though she had made little mistakes at both the trials and at qualifying, that vault was just….wrong.  It was very clear her mind was in a very bad place, to the point of danger.  Thankfully, she was able to land on her feet instead of her head, go backstage to talk with the team doctor, and make a decision that kept her safe.

….and social media exploded.  Armchair experts, criticizing her decision, telling her that the Olympics are about “pushing through” challenges.  People who can’t do a cartwheel or somersault, never mind a double twisting double pike, thinking they know what’s best for an athlete who has spent the past five years mastering her sport for this very moment while juggling the responsibilities and expectations of federations and sponsors. 

It was too much, and her mind….broke, separating from her body to the point that she could no longer physically do her sport.  Had she broken her ankle or—gasp—been taken off the floor on a stretcher on her way to the ER, there would be outpourings of sympathy, but since she is physically fine, it didn’t make sense to people who honestly, don’t understand how mental health really works.

Well, it made perfect sense to me.  It seems so long ago when I was running negative splits through Central Park in the New York City Marathon.  Taking a break to heal after the marathon turned to hustling multiple jobs to keep my head above water to surviving a global pandemic.  Just like many who struggle with mental illnesses, the stress over furloughs and disease and isolation and “not normal” triggered my OCDP contamination fears to spiral out of control, to the point where making a plan to run with friends is dictated by the various anxieties and rules created by my illness. 

Physically, I’m fine, but it has become so much a fight in my head to go running that I can’t.  It’s not something I can think away or push through or get over myself, because that will trigger a full-blown, self-destructive panic attack.  Like Biles, I have to find a way back to the basics, back to figuring out a way out of this hole, because I still have three marathons to run, including Boston.

Cashed in some gift cards for a new toy...just working on that insane step goal right now.

However, it’s not just about sports.  I struggle getting out the door of the house on time because I just can’t get my hands correctly clean.  People suffering from depression literally cannot get out of bed in the morning, while anxiety sufferers can get trapped in their own worried thoughts.  So many people having to fight their heads, their thoughts, every day—just to be a functional, productive member of society.

We have all faced mental blocks.  Maybe it’s a task that you just can’t start—or can’t finish.  Maybe it’s overcoming a fear or anxiety.  Maybe it’s having a confrontation or difficult conversation.  We have the training, the skill set, the ability to do it, but our minds just scream, “no!”  When your mind is blocking you, even from doing something you love, there is no escape. 

And when that block is about twisting and flipping and trying to land on your feet, you have to withdraw from the Olympic Games.  Even though these athletes make it look so easy, it’s not. 

After watching Mary Lou Retton win the all-around gold medal in 1984, I asked for—and received—gymnastics lessons.  I realized very quickly that not only did I not have the strength to do the basics we were learning in our group lessons, but that I was scared to do simple skills like handstand roll downs and back walkovers.  Gymnastics is a dangerous sport, and after my first meet, I decided it wasn’t my thing, moving on to the much safer ballet and tap dancing.

(I never did ask for figure skating lessons because I knew they happened before school, and my mother struggled to get us to school on time as it was.  Ah, hindsight.)

It’s not a surprise that so many Olympians and professional athletes have supported Biles in her decision to withdraw from the Olympics.  Every top athlete lives with the pressure from the obligations they have to their sport, their federation, and their sponsors, never mind what they place on themselves to keep winning, to keep succeeding.  At that level, it’s not enough to be at their top physical condition.  They have to be mentally strong to overcome all the nerves that come with being on their sport’s greatest stage, and over the years, we’ve seen many talented athletes come up short as their minds struggle with the stress, stress that many sitting on their couches at home take for granted because it’s so invisible.  Until Simone Biles said, “I can’t.”

Simone Biles might come away from Toyko without a gold medal, but she has given us all a lesson in mental health. 

Words Hurt as Much as Hands

 

“We should have never let you go to Lawrence.  You weren’t ready for college.”

I stopped, stunned.  “What did you say, Mom?”

“We watched the video from Colorado.  You were clearly miserable and not ready to go off to college. You should have stayed home and gone to MCC.”

Ah, Colorado.  The family vacation we took the summer after I graduated high school.  Since my school started much later than everyone else, my parents planned the trip in August….when all my friends were leaving for school.  Cue moody, miserable teenager.

This conversation, though, was many years later, when I was in my early 30s, and my parents were going through old photos and videos, one piece of the eventual sale of my childhood home.  It hurt to hear her discount all the hard work, all the scrimping and saving, all the effort we had taken as a family for me to get into—and afford—a rigorous, top-tier school.    

Today is May 1^st, decision day, and that memory always creeps in my brain as I think about my students and their college choices.  Spring has bloomed with college decisions and Mother’s Day….and blue children all over Lake County to raise awareness of child abuse. 

 

A Blue Kid of Lake County to promote Child Abuse Awareness

It all reminds me of my rocky, difficult relationship with my mother.

“Look at those girls,” my mom is saying to junior high me.  “Do you see them laughing at you?”

“No, where?”  I glanced around and saw two girls I didn’t recognize, whispering and giggling.

Maybe they were laughing at me, but they didn’t cast an impression on me.  I was a bit of a contrarian as a junior high kid, the type of kid who had a clear sense of who she was and where she was going.  I had zero interest in hair and makeup and clothes and celebrities, but loved science and math and Anne MacCaffrey and old movies and The Weather Channel.  I was looking forward to leaving the insular, small universe of my elementary/junior high (yes, one building for K-8) for the larger suburban high school, where there was a chance there were more kids like me, or even that buzzer thing they did on Head of the Class.  (There was.  We won conference my senior year, and I was named to the all-conference team.  I hope that plaque is still hanging in the hallway.)

My mother, however, noticed every single glance, every single giggle, every single whisper, and made sure that I was given the feedback.

The actual teasing and whispers and drama and gossip wasn’t so bad; we were all uncomfortable and struggling.  It was having to come home and have to rehash it in detail that had me terrified every day.  Most of my memories of eighth grade were standing at the foot of my parents’ bed, going through my day with my mom, who was analyzing everything I did and said, trying to suggest how I could have handled it better.  Hours spent staring at the bed, the wallpaper, trying to figure out how to make the conversation stop.

But the conversation never really stopped.  Her voice whispers through me at every social gathering, noticing every look or stare or awkward moment, her post-mortems in my head on the way home.  I look in the mirror, tired, never able to escape the lecture. 

As children, we believe our parents are right.  They are acting in our best interests, and their unconditional love means they would never do harm.  They love us so much they would kill for us, right?  Just like we see in those PBS documentaries.

“Trying to get your ideas on paper is like pulling teeth.  What are you trying to say here?”  A mother in graduate school, helping her daughter get through World Literature in high school.  I swear, those Greek and Latin vocabulary lessons saved me so many times...

“What I wrote down.”

“Erin, it doesn’t make any sense.  Here, you should rewrite it this way.”

Despite working on her masters’ degree in social work, my mother was always willing to help me.  While science and math came easily to me, writing did not.  I loved to read, but I saw a very different world in the literature we were reading—and my need to put the words perfectly on paper impeded my ability to communicate those thoughts.

As we’ve learned this year, parents aren’t always the best person to teach their children, and this was a textbook example.  She didn’t have the training to help me in a way that would encourage me, and as someone where every other aspect of school came easily, the discouragement factor was high.  Every session eroded my confidence in my writing skills, to the point where I didn’t think I could complete an assignment without her help.

It took four tough, grueling, frustrating years at Lawrence before I believed I was an adequate writer.  Four years of writing and editing and essay tests and term papers.  I had chosen a school that required formal, written lab reports and math assignments.

Four years of doing The Grind.

While college isn’t this happy, idyllic memory, I am so grateful for the growth and strength it gave me.  A lot of who I am today came from those difficult times.  Perhaps that’s why my mother’s comments about those four years—and wishing she had kept me home—stung so much, even ten years after graduation. 

*****

“We’d go to teacher conferences, and they kept asking me, ‘why is she so afraid of you?’ I didn’t know what to say, because that’s not how you behave at home.”

Her tone was part frustration, part exasperation, and part accusatory.  My father was on the school board, while my mother was active in the PTA.  In a small school where many of my teachers were also parents, they knew my family, my home, and there were no red flags of abuse.  It didn’t make sense.

To her.  Here I was, in my thirties, and it was the first inkling that maybe her way of parenting wasn’t healthy or right for me.  When I started therapy and unpacking my childhood, I learned that her behavior had crossed the line towards abuse.

What we truly don’t understand until we become adults is that our parents are the products of their own childhoods, their own brokenness from their own parents.  Many abusers were actually victims of abuse, never having dealt with their own trauma, and children are very good at testing their parent’s patience.  Parents who don’t have the practice and skills to handle such difficult situations…make mistakes. 

I will never say that I was an easy child.  The double-whammy of high IQ and undiagnosed mental illness is tough for even the best of parents.  My mother was a fixer, needing to correct everything around her, while I was this mess of a brain that didn’t stop and couldn’t calm.  It was a perfect storm of conflict, the child who didn’t have the language to express the fireworks in her brain and the mother whose brain was so full of her own issues she didn’t have the skills to meet me at my level. 

Instead, she tore me down verbally to gain the upper hand.  As long as she held my self-esteem, I was controllable.  Easy to parent.

We see child abuse as fists and anger, torture and neglect, but we don’t think about the words.  Words of misunderstanding and frustration, words that break confidence and trust.  It’s words that make a daughter who worked on three patents in nanocomposite technology, who got a job with the US House of Representatives, who medaled at a national figure skating championships, who finished nine marathons—believe she is the black sheep of the family, too much a contrarian, a monster, a dictator to be included.

Words matter.  Understanding matters.  Parenting is a hard job, one that, knowing what I know now, is completely beyond my abilities.  Good thing I never did settle down and have children.  The cycle is broken.  Healing is happening, and maybe some day I’ll be able to look at my mother and not feel her disappointment in me.

Not hear her words in my head.

My Thank You Letter to my Body

 After reading Lose Weight with Ang’s beautiful thank you note to her body, I felt compelled to write one of my own.  It has been a rough year, and my body has taken a back seat to my mind, a theme that needs to change as my 50^th birthday looms in the near future.  I hope you appreciate, and I hope you are inspired to write a thank you note to your body!

Enjoy!

PR Performance! October, 2018

Dear body,

Thank you for being so strong and healthy. 

It didn’t start that way.  The danger of the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck made my birth scary for a first-time mother and landed me in the high-risk nursery for the first week of my life.  That week was the last time I spent the night in the hospital, thanks to your strength and health.

I would need that strength and health of body, because my mind was often too broken to properly take care of you.  A mind that refused to eat at an age when food was needed to grow.  A mind driven to submit to hour after hour of training in order to excel in running and figure skating, despite having no natural talent or gifts.  A mind that insists on endless showers and hand washings.  A mind needing to be beaten into submission as the outside world triggered it into chaos.

You have been my rock, my pillar.  No matter what damage I inflicted upon you, you kept getting up, kept living, kept surviving.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since you put on a show, negative splitting the last five miles of the New York Marathon and finishing under five hours.  I was a lean, mean, running machine, and the future loomed bright.  There were so many things I could do for you to make you even stronger, even faster, even more beautiful.

But my mind was still healing from another breakdown, one that ended my job and my relationship that year.  Marathon training had to be put on hold as I struggled to stay ahead of the bills.

Again, you rose to the occasion, allowing me to take on several physically intensive jobs that required being in top shape.  As a global pandemic of an unknown virus shut down the world, your immune system kept me from succumbing to disease, allowing me to shuffle and adapt as furloughs loomed.

It was a glance in the mirror on a warm July afternoon that I noticed the damage I had inflicted upon you.  My face, always a source of pride, looked crooked.  My angled jaw was now rounded and chubby.  I looked at my body, the lithe sinew that traveled across the five boroughs of New York City, atrophied into a fluffy marshmallow.

My mind broke again, fearing everything from a possible stroke to a horrible disease.  It was in this fear that I realized how much I had taken your strength and health for granted, how many times I had skipped the basic checkups and maintenance, the things I had done to hurt you instead of care for you.  Inside of a world that could not return to normal and hours of isolation, my mind went into a tailspin, sliding down a spiral of self-pity and self-abuse instead of giving you the love and caring you deserved.

By the time I finally made it to the dentist and the doctor, I learned that once again, you had risen to the occasion.  No cavities, no major health issues, and no serious illnesses.  You gave me the gift of being able to heal my mental illnesses without having to battle physical ones as well.  I cannot thank you enough for that.

It is why I end this letter with a promise.  I promise to care for you, to treat you with love, to do everything in my power to nourish the strength and health you have given me all these years so that we can have many, many more years to come.

With Love,

Erin

 

Monster

 Something doesn’t feel right.

One little thing,

Shoved dramatically out of place,

One micron.

 

I can’t get it out of my mind,

The imperfection, the missing piece.

The stress builds in me,

As I cannot seem to correct the flaw.

 

My mind starts accelerating,

Faster than a Porsche.

Anxiety to panic,

Anger to rage.

 

I’ve become a demon,

A troll,

A fire breathing dragon,

A combination of all three.

 

The rage blinds my mind.

Maim! Hurt! Kill! Destroy!

The circuits have overloaded,

The fuses, blown.

 

Punishment is metered out,

To excise my internal pain.

For what I did wrong,

To cause the entire mess.

 

Then as fast as a Thanos snap,

The monster vanishes.

My mind is eerily quiet,

And full of dust.

Time Loop

Scrub, scrub, scrub, 
Never good enough
I’m stuck in a time loop
Of endless handwashing

Touch the faucet 

Scrub, scrub, scrub again

Touch the soap dish

Scrub, scrub, scrub again

Water too hot

Go to the other bathroom 

Scrub, scrub, scrub again

Take three steps from the sink

Have to turn around and 

Scrub, scrub, scrub again

Forget where I was going

What I was doing

Repeat from the beginning

Scrub, scrub, scrub all over

Wash all the dirt off my hands

And my mind

Clear my brain to focus

On the task ahead

I can’t stop until I’m ready

I’m perfect.

Or the idea of having unclean hands 

Slithers around my head

A poisonous snake.

While I’m washing and clearing my mind,

Time ticks on

Aggressively,

Relentlessly.

I have nothing to show for my hard work

But clean hands.

Hamster Wheels and Rabbit Holes

Nine years ago, reeling from having the rug pulled out from under me, I entered a therapist’s office and asked, “what is wrong with me?”

The same question everyone around me has been asking for decades.

After years of sorting through my life, there was a diagnosis:  Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  The symptoms were there—fear of contamination, handwashing, checking things over and over again—but every time I tried to challenge those compulsions, my head filled not with fear, but rage.

Recently, I discovered the reason why treatment wasn’t working.  I don’t have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.  I have the rarer and difficult to diagnose Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. 

You know you hit the right disorder…when you read the description and are flooded with memories that completely match the symptoms.  It’s a relief to finally, finally have the right name for all this discomfort.

Then you realize you have a personality disorder.  Like, my personality is so far from normal that it’s “disordered.”  Time to resurrect that exceptional people book club, huh?

A man who turned his ALS diagnosis into great things...so why can't I?

Less than a week earlier, in response to a birthday text where a friend asked me how I was doing, I replied, “stuck on hamster wheels and lost down rabbit holes.”  Ironically, it’s a great description of what living with OCPD is like.

I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel, working so very hard to get things accomplished and checked off the list, but by the end of the day, having little to show for my efforts.  Even in these times, when the minutes drag by like hours, the days like weeks, and the months like years….the to do list seems to be growing instead of shrinking.  (Don’t ask about the bank account.  Spoiler alert:  it’s not growing nearly as fast.)

With OCPD, the organization and procedure for each task is detailed and precise.  Every step in the process has to be carefully thought out and planned.  If my brain even has one molecule of anxiety, I have to walk away and calm myself down.  And if the task isn’t done perfectly, I have to start from the beginning and redo it until it is perfect.

I probably look just like that hamster, expending all that energy with no forward progression. 

Pretty much my entire life....via GIPHY

Probably because I’m constantly getting stuck in rabbit holes I dug for myself.  You know when you put one thing away in the junk drawer, which leads you to organize the junk drawer, where you find that button that popped off a shirt a couple weeks ago, which leads you to find the shirt to sew the button, which leads to doing a load of laundry?  Rabbit hole. 

Well, I tend to dig a lot of them, and then proceed to get lost wandering around the resulting maze of tunnels.  It starts innocently enough with one task, like putting an item away in a drawer, but then I notice that the drawer needs to be cleaned.  As I’m taking out one item from the drawer to clean it, I notice it belongs in another room, but that space needs to be decontaminated before anything can go into there.  I start making a list of how to clean that space, and well, now that first item won’t get put away until I get that list completed.

Of course, life is what gets in the way of plans, and before I can finish that list, I have to sort the mail for an important document or clean out the car or get the laundry room ready for the possibility of something breaking and needing repair….

As I’m trying to fill up one rabbit hole, another dozen or so appear.  

At least, I keep thinking I do...

For years, I believed the issue was that I was lazy or disorganized or, dare I say it, stupid, to figure out how to function like a normal person.  I’ve spent a lot of time trying to fight my brain, which always wins, but now it’s time to figure out a life that works for how I’m wired.

It’s time to step off the hamster wheels and come out of the rabbit holes….and start writing the first chapter of the rest of my life.

The Labyrinth

Lost

In the labyrinth of my head

The giant maze of all my responsibilities

My brain on overload

 

I need to press forward

To stay ahead of my bills

To stay ahead of my life

Before the house of cards falls down

 

It’s like the game we played

On the first PC we owned

An IBM 286

Walking around a castle gathering treasures and fighting villains

With no end, no victory

 

So many twists and turns

Too many dead ends

And the fear of finding a monster around the corner

There are no good surprises here

 

I rush down the path

Many miles traveled

Just to find another wall

Turn around and go back the way I came

So much time wasted

 

A monster comes out of nowhere.

Emergency!  Panic!

Rush, rush, rush to another corridor

Completely lost in the chaos

Start again from square one

 

I need to find the map

The guide, the key

Until then I am trapped

Unable to escape

 

I tire easily, my eyes close.

I dream about being free

Away from the monsters and cold, thick walls

Happy.

 

Until a monster roars me awake

Back into the darkness

I continue on, step by step

Trying to find the exit

Before the maze consumes my mind

The Grind

I’ve been a chemistry tutor for over five years.  What started as helping out a friend has become a new career, and I’ve added math, including calculus, to the mix this year.  Gosh, I so missed solving hard math problems.

Many people think they’re bad at math because they don’t have all the answers instantaneously.  They don’t even know what skill they need to start a problem.  Chemistry is challenging because it’s usually the first time you’re using math to solve science—an entire year of those dreaded word problems.

One of the many secrets to mastering math and chemistry isn’t a formula or a cheat sheet or having mad skills.  It’s being able to attack each problem, each test question.  Look at what you’re given, look at what they want from you, and go from A to B.

How do you do that?  Practice.  The practice of doing many, many problems until you are able to attack anything that might be thrown at you.

It’s no different than anything else you practice—an instrument, a sport, an art.  In order to master any subject, you have to do the grind.  The grind of waking up and doing the same thing day after day.  The grind of focusing on perfecting each little detail.  The grind of continuing to move forward so slowly that you see more failure than success.  The grind of brushing yourself off after each failure and getting back on the path.

Over the years, people are in awe of my chemistry degree, like I have this amazing talent.  To be honest, it’s just that my love of the subject gave me the determination to grind out problem after problem.  I can’t sleep on an unsolved chemistry or math or computer programming problem, often waking at 2 am to finish what I started.  It just tumbles in my brain, crying to be solved, just like the baseball player down the street throwing curveballs at a net late on a summer evening or the oboe player next door playing the same measure of music over and over again on a Saturday morning.

Of course, it’s easy for someone with a passion for baseball or a talent for playing the oboe to do the grind, but have you ever heard someone express a huge passion for being a cog in a Corporate America cube farm?  How do you grind at something you don’t love?  That doesn’t come easily for you?

How many of you loved school when you were in second grade, but hated it by the time you were in high school because the classwork was just so hard?  How many of you grew up playing Little League or taking dance lessons or studying piano, but quit when it seemed that you had hit your limit? 

I joke that I’m the utility ballplayer of life because I’ve done so many things, but quit before I had mastered them.  I’m competent in a lot of skills, but not exceptional.  My resume goes from research chemist to quality consultant to executive director of a political party to tutor.  I’ve taken dance lessons and piano lessons and figure skating lessons.  I played clarinet in the school band, nine years total.  Even where I do have talents, math and science, didn’t help me push through the challenges in college.  I graduated with my degree, but barely.

It’s hard to believe that a year ago, I was on top of the world with my running, having negatively split New York through the hardest part of the course to break 5 hours and get my second fastest time.  2020 was supposed to be the year I took a break from racing to focus on how I could get that Boston qualifying time.  Then the world shut down, and my focus turned to survival.  As the months tickd by, and races continue to be cancelled, delayed, postponed, and modified, I thought about my quest to finish all six majors by my 50^th birthday.  The deferments, the cancellations were definitely going to impede my ability to grab slots in Toyko or London once things returned to normal.  There’s usually half a million people who apply for those lotteries in a normal year, but what now?  As for Boston, losing one, if not two years for charity runners will make it even harder to get one of those coveted spots, and I’m so busy trying to survive that running has taken a back seat, derailing my efforts to qualify.

I have five years to get into three major marathons.  I’m barely scraping by, financially, my mental health is a mess, and there are now millions of runners who didn’t get the spots they thought they’d get this year.  How on earth am I going to finish this quest?

Then I thought of my students, past, present, and future.  How many of them feel dumb at school?  How many hate doing homework because they just don’t even understand the lesson?  How many want to give up and say they can’t do chemistry or math?

Tutoring isn’t just about AP exams and letter grades.  It’s about helping these kids overcome challenges, solve problems, and learn how they learn so they can apply these skills for the rest of their life.  Odds are that you won’t have to use the ideal gas law or Rolle’s Theorem in your 40s, but the skills that got you through those assignments and tests, will.

Just like my quest; it is more about the journey more than the end result.

In 2021, I need to figure out how to do the grind when it’s something that isn’t easy or fun or exciting or interesting.  After some soul-searching, I came up with three things I’d like to accomplish this year for three very different reasons.  They are all going to take that grind, though in different ways:

1. British accent.  As a high school drama kid, I was always jealous of my classmates who could switch into a British accent without even thinking about it.  When I got a part in the fall play and had to do five lines in accent, I spent hours and hours listening to Brits read books on tape, trying to figure out the intonations and pronunciations, but never feeling like I got it right.  Now, with YouTube and Zoom and all sorts of tools (there has to be an app, right?), as well as maturity and wisdom, perhaps I can master something that I was convinced I couldn’t.
2. Daily routine.  It’s been a year, right?  As I navigated the roller coaster of part time work and furloughs, I saw a lot of my regular maintenance routines falling apart from running to brushing my hair every morning.  I’ve put down the list of things I do want to accomplish every day.  It may not be fun or exciting, but going through the steps to get my life reset will do wonders for my mental health.  (If you were wondering about running, it’s part of this routine.  Baby steps.)
3. Blogs and Coffee.  As part of my daily routine, I’m reading blogs I find on Twitter over my morning coffee.  I had a great idea a couple of days ago to use the hashtag #blogsandcoffee to share the blogs that I’m reading.  Now, I’ve had a lot of great ideas over the years that get lost on the wayside for a number of reasons, so my goal here is to post #blogsandcoffee every single day in 2021, even if it’s a tweet to say why there wasn’t a #blogsandcoffee.  Maybe it will develop a following, maybe it won’t, but at least I ground through the challenges and finished what I started.

Unlike most New Years resolutions, which have an endpoint, I am creating a focus, an intention, to grow as a person, regardless of whether or not I meet my goals.  If I figure out how to grind through things I don’t enjoy, it’s powerful—and it’s a power I can teach my students so they can succeed, whether it’s third grade math or AP Physics.

Also, rather than a personal, specific goal, it’s a theme we can all take together.  Let’s face it.  2020 was a struggle in many ways.  We survived, but not without damage.  We’re not the same people who started this year, but to continue to thrive, we need to continue to evolve.  We need to grind through our challenges, whether it’s AP Calculus or working from home or figuring out how to change the oil on the car.  What are you needing to grind through in 2021? 

I Dream...

 

I dream….

Of always having perfectly manicured nails,

A daily facial and makeup routine,

More than two ways to do my hair.

I dream….

Of a home where everything has a spot,

Nothing accumulates,

All comfy and cozy and warm and safe.

I dream….

Of everything going as planned,

Not having to put out fire after fire,

Because all the preventative things were done on time.

I dream….

          Of feeling healthy and powerful,

          Not afraid that every little ache and pain,

          Is something more serious.

I dream….

          Of a month where I don’t have to worry about money,

          Or paying the bills,

          Able to do the work I love.

I dream….

          Of seeing a woman who exudes confidence and success,

          When I look at the mirror.

I dream….

          Of having a surplus of time and energy,

          To do nice things for my friends,

          And to help those who are struggling.

I dream….

          Of a neat, ordered life where nothing is out of place,

          Where I can give more than I take,

And my mind is finally at peace.

Please, Don’t Fix Me

Last time, I talked about how I’m putting stuff I want out of my life on FB Marketplace.  I’ve had people over the past couple of years suggest to me that they would come over, clear out the stuff, and wouldn’t I feel so much better without the clutter?  Isn’t that just an easy thing to do, and then everything would be fixed?

To be honest, no.  This process of choosing an item, listing it, and selling it is giving me a great deal of pleasure.  As well as a few extra dollars for the savings account.  I enjoy the ability to give each item the time I need to make a decision, instead of having the stress of making hundreds of decisions in one day. 

Besides, why do I have to complete this project so quickly? 

I don’t have a spouse.  I don’t have children.  My cat just doesn’t care.  (Seriously, as long as she gets one spoonful of wet food with gravy, lap time, and scritches, she’s pretty happy.)

Nobody is depending on me to finish by a certain date, so it’s nice to have something that is completely on my terms, within my complete control, according to my plan.  So little in life is like that, and instead of stressed, I’m calmed by this process.  It’s been an adventure instead of a chore.

I mean, who doesn't want an antique rocking chair?

(Santa, lamp, and pan not included.)

Perhaps that’s why, when people ask me for marathon running advice, my response is simple:  own your training journey, because that’s what will take you through race day.  You need to do what makes sense for you, not what other people tell you to do.

I’m not running those 26.2 miles….you are, so you need to feel proud and determined and successful as you wait in the starting corrals.  That happens when you prepare on your own terms, taking the information you like and ignoring the information that doesn’t work for you. 

It’s such different advice than I’ve received through my journey in this world.  People like to fix problems, so when they hear about an issue, they often blurt out the solution that works for them, whether it’s why you’re stuck around a 5:30 marathon or have a cluttered house or are struggling with a relationship or unhappy at work or have a phone with 30% charge on it.  They so want to alleviate the anxiety in the air, and it worked for them, so why not everyone else?

Well, we’re all different.  All. Of Us. 7. Billion. Humans.  We are all going to have different dreams, different challenges, different belief systems, different ways of seeing a problem.  Your “simple” solution may not be the best for the person with ADD.  Or dyslexia.  And definitely not someone with OCD.

Instead of jumping to fix everyone else’s issues, why not just listen?  Why not just ask questions to help clarify?  Why not help the person find what works for them instead of telling them what they should do?  And if they say, “I’m okay, thank you,” let it go.

While the solution may seem completely obvious to you, there’s power in the process of problem solving.  When you give someone the space to own their solution, you give them the confidence to grow and learn and be even better than they ever imagined.  It’s an uncomfortable space, letting someone sit with their issue that appears easily solvable, but usually, the end result is beyond your expectations.

Instead of asking someone to conform to you, you’re empowering them to be exceptional.

So please don’t fix me.  I’m on my own path to healing, thank you very much, and as I grow from this process, great things will happen.  Well, at least a few hundred dollars from FB Marketplace sales….

My OCD as a Superpower

Just like my morning cup of coffee, I need to have every single step of my day organized in my head.  It allows me to go through everything smoothly, like a choreographed dance, calming and clearing my mind so I have the energy and focus to pursue my dreams.  It’s as satisfying as setting up a domino show, then watching it tumble:

Isn't that soothing to watch?  The order, the organization, the choreography....

Life, however, almost never operates that easily.  As things start falling off the rails, my head starts filling with anxious noise.  I’m thrown into a tizzy of multiple thought streams speeding across my neural net, rendering me unable to focus on any one item for more than a few seconds.  The noise will escalate until I can barely see or hear or feel the real world, my brain completely disconnected by the overloaded circuits.  I can even be so stressed that I struggle to breathe.

I need to take some time, calm my head, clear my brain, and reset the dominoes.  Sometimes, it’s just a few breaths or a walk around the block or completing an online survey or playing a video game or taking care of something that is hanging over me.  Other times, I escape to dreamland, wishing for a life without worry.  Occasionally, I can get so agitated that I have to lie down and take a nap just to avoid a major panic attack. 

While I’m doing all these things to soothe my overwhelmed, overloaded brain back to coherent thought, time continues to march forward, as do the schedules and deadlines and time limits that trigger my anxiety in the first place.  No wonder I’m always pressed—or stressed—for time.  I never have enough time to finish a project or respond to someone or get somewhere because it just takes more time than I have.

Time becomes my enemy, and as the clock ticks, so does my anxiety, and as everything churns inside me, I start having the urge to act impulsively.

Sigh.  The only thing worse than my relationship with time….is my relationship with impulsivity.

The beauty about having my head organized is feeling clear and calm and able to make thoughtful, reasoned decisions.  I love being thoughtful, being able to think things through, being able to plan my decisions and their ramifications. 

As I start stressing over how little time I have to get things done, my mind fills with panicked responses, ways to get the anxiety to clear as quickly as possible.  I no longer care about being thoughtful or kind or considerate.  I no longer care if I’m doing the job okay.  I no longer care about anyone else’s feelings.  I just want the chaotic mess out of my brain and back to calm and organized.

If I react to these impulsive feelings, it never ends well.  I’ve lied and cheated.  I’ve done work that was so careless and awful that it had to be redone.  I’ve said horrible, hurtful things to people.  I’ve made terrible mistakes.  I’ve destroyed things that I had so carefully built.  In the attempt to alleviate the chaos, I end up creating a bigger mess and losing even more time to the anger and panic.

I cannot give into this insanity, and yet, life often forces me to do so.  I’m filled with regret over the impulsive decisions I’ve made over the years, many of which haunt me decades later.   

Which brings me to my garage.  It’s filled with an eclectic collection of stuff my ex-boyfriend acquired in an attempt to start a reseller business, but never could get it off the ground.  What do you do when a global pandemic hits after you’ve drained your emergency savings?  You start selling things. 

Any day when I’m not working my other three (!) jobs, I’m in the garage, listing his random stuff online.  It’s actually been cathartic to go through this process of selling each item, feeling like I’m stepping closer to financial freedom.  However, I tend to be a little impulsive about pricing…..

I priced these cards from the 1970s for $5.  Whoops.

What do you expect happens when I am selling things like electronics and tools and collectables at bottom-barrel prices in a county with a population of 700,000?  Yup, my phone blows up like Jennifer Aniston’s did when she joined Instagram.  (Okay, maybe not that much, but I’ve gotten some serious empathy for those IG folks with millions of followers.)  it’s absolutely insane how crazed people get about a computer monitor I can’t guarantee works or a power drill without a battery, just because it’s only $5.

Most of the responses are male, and clearly impulsive.  They are willing to run out the door and fly straight to my house to pick up the item, lest I sell to someone else.  They offer more money than I’m listing in hopes that they can jump ahead in line.  Their overly forward, determined behavior to mow down every obstacle in their way is unsettling, to say the least, especially for someone is often already stressed and overwhelmed by time and impulsive behavior.

In this chaos, my OCD becomes my superpower, treating the madness with rigid rules to implement calm and organization.  My response to the impulsive insanity is on my timeline, a timeline that allows me to feel calm and organized.  If I feel the need to impulsively respond, I set the phone down and wait until I’ve thought through my response.  What’s amazing is by controlling the timeline and refusing to be impulsive, these guys calm down as well, becoming much easier to work with as they realize I’m going to be fair and considerate and thoughtful.  Probably why I’m a highly rated seller.

Now to harness this superpower and apply it to other aspects of my life.  And yes, to double my prices on Marketplace…..

Finding My Way out of Dreamland

I have a coffee cup that says, “Stop Dreaming and Start Doing.”  It’s one of those mantras we see everywhere, from wall hangings to planners to….well, coffee cups.

Are you dreaming, or are you doing?

One day last week, I intentionally chose that cup because lately, it’s felt like I’ve spent more time dreaming and less time doing. 

Then my toilet clogged, triggering my contamination OCD and just making me too anxious to do anything beyond the bare minimum.  I went to bed, frustrated at what little “doing” I was able to accomplish.  However, I did a great job dreaming my day away, fantasizing about a life where everything was just…easier.

Dreaming has been my coping mechanism ever since I learned to read.  Falling into books, creating characters, being the person I wish I was instead of the person I saw in the mirror.  As a child, I would hide in my room, acting out the scenes I created to alleviate the stresses from school and home and a Mensa-level IQ and an undiagnosed mental illness.  (OCD is something you’re born with, and I knew it was the right diagnosis when my childhood memories and motivations suddenly made sense.)  No wonder at times of stress, I would lose myself in a fantasy of my own creation.

This time, however, the message on the mug stayed with me.  I’d fallen into my fantasy so deep that it was running as a continual stream in the back of my head, impeding my ability to function on a daily basis.  My escape from stress and anxiety was now creating so much noise that I couldn’t focus on anything.  I would read emails and not remember a word of content.  I would complete a task and then redo it, having completely forgotten that I had just done it.  I would ignore the people in my real world, preferring the interactions of the scenes in my head.

Looking backwards, it makes sense.  Before there was a global pandemic, I had run out of savings.  Before I ran out of savings, I had a horrible ending of a four-year relationship.  Before my ex and I broke up, I had a complete mental breakdown.  Before the breakdown, I quit my job to save my mental health.  The need for escapism was real, but it had gone too far and too deep.  I was now lost in my dreamworld, avoiding reality at all costs.

I looked back even further and saw the hours I spent over the years dreaming about what could be, rather than doing the hard work to make these dreams happen.  Pursuing your dreams…..is hard.  It’s the grind of plinking forward, failing, picking yourself up, and plinking forward again.  It’s fighting the boredom and the burnout and the monotony of spending so much time on something with so little progress.  It’s dealing with challenges and roadblocks and people who think you aren’t worthy. 

Just like….running a marathon.  Or nine.  Why was I able to do that and not this?

In my real life, I’ve always felt powerless and silent, not worthy of attention.  As a child, my mom would tell me that it was best if I didn’t speak my mind because she feared me being rejected by society.  I bit my tongue, became invisible, and created an alternate world in my mind where my ideas were valued and appreciated.

Fast forward to January 1, 2020.  I decided it was time to start writing down my ideas, my scripts, my scenes, my stories.  Then the world turned upside down with the coronavirus, and I lost my way, reality being so grim that my dreamworld was my only safe place.  We all have been finding some form of escapism this year, whether it is getting lost in video games, social media, Netflix binges, or scenes being played out in my own house.  We all need an escape right now. 

But for there to be any possibility for my dreams to come true, I need to leave my dreamland behind and re-engage with reality.

Instead of dreaming, I need to be writing down my dreams.  Instead of watching YouTube videos, I need to be watching Khan Academy videos.  Instead of disconnecting into fantasies, I need to be connecting with people. 

Just like the mug said, instead of dreaming, I need to be doing.

A Simple Cup of Coffee

 

I have to start every day with my coffee and my ritual....

Step 1:  Wash hands.

Step 2:  Turn on cold water in kitchen sink.

Step 3:  Wash hands.

Step 4:  Fill kettle, place on stove, and turn on burner.

Step 5:  Wash hands.

Step 6:  Open dishwasher with right hand.  Pull out coffee mug and spoon with right hand.  Close dishwasher.

Step 7:  Wash hands.

Step 8:  Scoop spoonful of coffee into cup.  Open refrigerator door with left pinky finger.  Pull out creamer and add to cup.  Open refrigerator door with left pinky finger.  Put creamer back in fridge.

Step 9:  Wash hands.

Step 10:  Wait for water to boil.

Step 11:  Wash hands.

Step 12:  Pour boiling water in mug.  Turn off stove.

Step 13:  Wash hands.

Step 14:  Stir coffee with spoon.

Step 15:  Wash hands.

Step 16:  Grab mug by handle and enjoy.

 

Not so simple, right?  With today being World Mental Health Day, I wanted to give you a glimpse of what it’s like to really, truly have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.  I start every morning with these 16 steps.  Every. Single. Morning.  Every. Single. Step. 

When I do it perfectly, it brings me great satisfaction, calming my mind so I can focus on my day.  When I don’t, my mind is plunged into a chaos of anxiety and fear, and it takes an enormous amount of energy to find order in that mess and re-right the ship of my day. 

The ritual keeps the monster of mental illness away, a monster of overloaded circuits and being so unable to think that I can’t drive, work, or be functional in any way, shape, or form.  It’s a battle I fight every single day, and no, it’s not as simple as “mind over matter.”  Trying to force my mind to be “normal” ends up causing physical issues, like insomnia or digestive issues.  Mental illness is truly illness.

This year has taken a toll on so many people’s mental health.  The pandemic, the lockdowns, the protests, the election have been so stressful, so traumatic, that anger and sadness fill our world.  Please take some time to listen, to learn, to grow, and to truly understand what it is like to live with mental illness.  Pledge to stop joking about “being OCD” because you want everything neat and clean and organized.  (It’s really, really not funny or cute or true.  OCD is a very complicated diagnosis where your brain is just not wired like everyone else’s.)  Commit to listening to others talk about their issues without feeling the need to give advice, because “what you would do” probably won’t work for someone else.

We still have a long way to go before this chapter of history ends, and we can only thrive if we face it with compassion and empathy for each other.  World Mental Health Day seems like a good place to start with a simple cup of OCD coffee.