mental health

New Year’s Resolution

Erica, Free

This year, my resolution is to actually be honest with myself about how my life is going. 2022 was hard and I sort of just powered through and pretended everything was okay. It wasn’t okay. I’m not okay. Things are probably going to get harder before they get better and that’s just how it is sometimes, but I don’t have to pretend like it’s easy or like it’s somehow positive.

And I’m going to be honest with myself when things are going well too. Just because I’ve been going through a tough time doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore the good moments. Those are important, and they’re what’ll keep me going. I’m not going to get so caught up in powering through that I forget to take time for myself. 

What does that mean for this blog? I don’t know. I’m not giving up on it. The posts might be different. I’ll probably focus more on mental health than the actual mechanics of crafting. And I’ll share some of the stuff that made last year kind of a nightmare. But everyone else should be the same. Anyway, hope this year is a good one.

–Erica

New Year’s Resolutions I Can’t Be Bothered With

Erica, Free

Mid-February (or late February by the time I actually post this) is the glorious time of year when everyone’s New Year’s resolutions fall apart. I used to be part of that “everyone,” setting lofty expectations for myself each January only to run out of steam in six to eight weeks.

In celebration of my epiphany that I can’t make a daily habit out of anything, and trying to only leads to self-loathing, here is a list of New Year’s Resolutions I refused to make this year:

  1. Any Kind of Exercise Goal: Any kind of exercise goal. I know I feel better when I exercise. And I know I feel better when I can make a routine of it. But my schedule does not always work for goals like exercising a certain number of times per week, and any other fitness goal will end up with me overextending myself and hurting myself. So I will just stick with the knowledge that I feel better when I exercise and seize the motivation whenever I remember.
  2. The Same Thing, But with Meditation
  3. Learning a New Skill: There are so many things I hope to learn and so many options for a resolution like this, I find it overwhelming. I do hope to learn some new skills, or gain a deeper knowledge of the ones I already have.  kind of goes on this is just too much pressure and text the enjoyment out of it.
  4. Goals For This Blog: If I did pick a resolution for this, I would say to keep the posts and newsletters coming out in groups throughout the year. But as I saw last year, sometimes I really do need a break and while this blog is very important to me, it is far from the most important thing in my life or my main source of income.

What are some resolutions I did make? I do better with New Year’s resolutions when they are simple, one-off things that I just need a little extra motivation to accomplish. One of them was to get a new bedframe, which I accomplished before the end of the year (yay me!). The other will be to harness my powers so I can haunt my boss. It’s been too long and he just deserves it.

-Erica

Why Vampires Make The Best Depression Buddies

Free, Jane

I waffled back-and-forth over whether or not I should write this, but with Erica prioritizing herself through this mild depression, as she should, I felt I us sad folks were rather underrepresented. Ella does her best to try to understand Erica, and it is helpful to have someone who is willing to give you the space you need and can demonstrate what it will be like on the other side. But sometimes, you also need someone who knows exactly what you’re going through, from the anxiety to the depression and the exhaustion. Someone who understands without hesitation. So I am here to explain my role as Erica’s emotional support vampire.

I’ve known Erica for a while, and Ella for just a bit longer. I was drawn to the building independently about a year before Ella and Erica moved in. I was delighted to have some supernatural company and became fast friends with both of them. Which is how I ended up as Erica’s emotional support monster during this latest wave of depression.

It was only fitting that I be there for her as she helped me through my last particularly rough bout with depression. I had endured a rather tragic event and came to a traumatic realization that nearly paralyzed me and Erica was with me every step of the way. Although you wouldn’t know because both she and Ella have done wonders to protect my privacy until this time. And no, this particular tragedy was not my transformation into a vampire. While tragic, I was transformed nearly 200 years ago and for the most part have accepted my fate as a vampire.

One overlooked benefit of vampirism is that it makes it easy to be there for the people you care about when they need you. We are largely inactive during the day so we make great binge watching buddies. When we do venture out, we must stay out of the sun which makes us great companions for the trip to IKEA or Home Depot that has been weighing on you but right now seems to overwhelming.

Some reasons might be more specific to me, but are still heavily influenced by my vampirism. I love listening to people, and hearing what human life is like, even the bad stuff. Just to know what I missed out on. And I know exactly what it feels like wake up wonder why on earth you were dealt this lot, and that there are certain problems that you have to deal with no matter how difficult and exhausting and complicated they are. And I know the feeling of hopelessness when you cannot immediately change your circumstances. And I know the feeling of waking up one morning and, even though your circumstances have not changed, something has clicked in your brain and you have found the world once again full of joy and wonder. And I will never stand in your way when that morning comes when that morning comes arrives. I know so intimately what it is like to be robbed of the joys of human life that I would never, in my own indulgence, drag someone back into a depression keep myself company.

So get yourself an emotional support vampire. Unless you are not magical. Then we might try to eat you.

-Jane

Pillows on a recently made bed

A Smattering of Past Projects (Since I Have Nothing New to Share)

Erica, Free

In the absence of new projects to share, I figured I would share some old ones. These will be brief descriptions, rather than step-by-step reflections because honestly I just want a list of all the things that I’ve done all in one place. Hopefully the reminder that I used to do interesting things will motivate me to start something new. So here is a non-exhaustive list of the crafting and DIY projects I’ve completed in the past couple of years.

My Birdcages: I love my house plants. I had them even before I got my cats. And I was shocked that both my cats have an insatiable appetite for foliage. I figured birdcages would be the perfect solution, keeping my plants safe from sharp teeth and claws, but still allowing sunlight to reach them. I purchased two birdcages from Facebook Marketplace. One came with a wooden stand, which I lugged all the way to my basement to sand down and repaint a green that fits in my living room. Because my apartment, especially my living room, is a bit of a cave, I needed grow lights. I tried a couple set-ups before settling on 60-watt grow light bulbs in utility clamp lights. The set-up is not as cute as I originally imagined but still presentable enough to be in the living room.

My Small Dresser: I thrifted a low, white, three-drawer dresser for my apartment my senior year of college. It suited its purpose, but the paint job wasn’t great, and after painting my birdcage stand I figured I might as well paint my dresser. I still had leftover green paint, although not enough for the whole dresser, so I purchased a complementary dark blue color as well as new knobs for the drawers. This was another project that need to be carried all the way down to the basement before being sanded down and painted in multiple stages. I thought about alternating colors every change in profile that would be too busy. I settled on painting the center of the drawers as well as a green, rectangular outline along the top and then painted the rest blue. The rectangle on top is not exactly straight into the blue is not not as dark as I first imagine, but it certainly fits my decor better than a plain white for the painted dresser.

My Utility Shelves: I sometimes surprise myself when I remember that before I had my large set of shelves, I kept my TV on a small end table and I don’t even know where I kept my crafting supplies. When the end table proved inadequate, I decided to get some larger shelves. I liked the look of the black and wood IKEA shelves utility shelves, but I wanted to make them a little more formal for the living room, and also a little more exciting. I borrowed a staple gun from a coworker and purchased 3 or 4 yards of upholstery fabric from IKEA. I spent the night watching Grace and Frankie and stapling the fabric to the shelves. I love them, even though they are a pain to vacuum.

My Slipcovers: This project was born more out of necessity. My cats kept puking on my chairs. I figured it was easier to wash a slipcover than entire chair, but the slipcover patterns at IKEA leave something to be desired. I purchased more upholstery fabric and worked in fits and starts to create slip covers for my living room and bedroom chairs. The finished project product is sloppy and beginning to fall apart, but as my first ever sewing project I am very proud of them.

My Crocheted Blankets: I was really into knitting and crocheting in high school, although I never really advanced past scarves. After bringing all of my yarn to college with me, I started to make granny squares with the scraps from my various high school projects. I worked on them intermittently throughout college and then once I graduated decided I needed to finish the blanket. I took a long time and did require some further yarn purchases, but I am the proud owner of a homemade granny square blanket that fits well over my queen-size bed. With the leftover scraps from there, because there are always more scraps, I also completed a ripple blanket, which is wonky and subscribes to no particular color scheme but it is cozy.

Countless Embroidery Projects: Countless is somewhat of a lie. I could count them for you, but I don’t feel like it. Embroidery is by far my favorite creative outlet and there is more embroidery than anything else. Before I inflicted this curtain project on myself, I worked mostly on smaller projects like decorative hoops, bookmarks, and occasionally pillowcases. Looking back on those projects, I think it might be a good time to take a break from my curtains and maybe start something a little more inspiring.

After going through this list of projects I’ve completed in the past few years I think a couple of them merit a longer reflection. Maybe that will inspire me to start a different project.

(If I do a further reflection of a project, there will be pictures in that post. I was too lazy to get pictures this time.)

-Erica

A picture of some wildflowers

Self-Care Strategies that Do Work for Me (Repost)

Erica, Review

July is a free review month! This post would normally be for Patreon subscribers, but is being reposted for free. If you’re not a Patreon subscriber, this is what the Patreon posts are like. If you are a Patreon subscriber and have been wanting to share this post, now you can! (please do).

In an effort to balance out my rant about self-care tactics that don’t work for me, I thought I would share some that do. While I will be sharing specific things that I do, I don’t want to present this as a list of things that work for me and should also work for you. I intend to focus more on how I settled on these methods, how they have helped me, and how I handle my own expectations for them.

1) Meditation: I will admit, my journey with mindfulness meditation began through a workplace wellness program. At first, I saw it as a great way to take an extra little three-minute break during the day. That led to many more three minute breaks, and eventually to me downloading a mindfulness app, but not really establishing any sort of routine. I had difficulty making time to meditate on the weekends, mostly because I did not want to be alone with my thoughts. After a long break during the pandemic, I downloaded a different app and started my journey over again. Most days I meditated very much in earnest, although some days I just put the timer on while I brushed my teeth to keep my streak. Eventually I noticed that I felt better on days when I meditated, and every once in a while I noticed myself dismissing troublesome thoughts.

But the results were not immediate. I was 200 days into my second meditation journey before I was able to put my phone in the drawer at work for even one day, and it was another hundred days before I was able to do so with any sort of consistency. For me, meditation hit that sweet spot of short term and long term benefits. Every day, whether I felt It was having an effect on the rest of my life or not I got some peace a few moments of peace and quiet.

2) Exercise: I’m not here to proselytize the benefits of exercise, which may not be accessible to everyone, or extol the benefits of a specific exercise routine. Everyone’s body is unique and the right exercise for you is a personal matter, so I wont to get into specifics. I want to use exercise as an example of something that takes much more time out of the day, and something that I have had an on-again-off-again relationship with for pretty much my entire life. My early dabbling for the exercise were largely tied to my teenage body image issues. After college, armed with a more thorough knowledge of how bodies work and a different set of expectations, I began to exercise again. This time my motivation was much healthier. I knew the more I moved, the better I felt, especially in contrast to a highly sedentary job.

Over the past few years I have tried, for varying amounts of time: yoga videos, which were the quickest and easiest; swimming, which was the most time-consuming, but also when I can say I was physically at my strongest; cycling during the beginning of quarantine when I was furloughed and itching to get outside, and now I do low-impact aerobics routines, which are much easier on my joints, but at least get my heart rate up.

In between each of these, there were long periods where I got little or no exercise. Sometimes I was just too busy, and sometimes my previous form of exercise no longer fit with my schedule. Every time I found something new I would have to start again from the beginning. I still struggle with having to backtrack so that I don’t over exert myself after I take a week off for whatever reason. My current routine works for me now and that’s great but I’ve learned enough from the past not to be disappointed when it doesn’t work forever and I have to find something new.

3) Setting Boundaries: This may seem like a departure from the previous methods in that it is not visibly advertised. After all, it would be difficult to sell you a boundary-setting app and no workplace wants to be on the receiving end of such boundaries. Learning to set healthy boundaries took a lot of therapy, which I know not everyone has access to, and a lot of lived experience. One simple boundary I set was not going out on weeknights. I decided it was more important for me to get enough rest before work the next day. None of my friendships have suffered. There are other, more personal boundaries that have been more difficult to set and I won’t get into details here. I had to go through the difficult task of parsing out what was reasonable to protect myself and what would put an undue burden on someone else. At the root of it all, though, I had to come to the realization that I was worthy of respect. And that is a conclusion I hope everyone is able to come to on their self-care journey.

 4) Journaling: My other on-again-off-again relationship. If you were to flip through the journals I have accumulated throughout my life, which I hope only Carolyn ever has or will, you would probably be very concerned for me. I tend to journal when I need it most, often in a time of crisis. I’ve tried at various times to create an “every single day” journaling habit to no avail. Journaling is where I exercise my self-imposed principle that nothing is self-care if it really stresses me out more than it helps. And often if I set a standard of journaling every single day, finding time to journal is more stressful than the stress it relieves. But I know that if I ever need to process something out on paper, the blank page is there for me.

5) Scheduling Me Time: I don’t do this terribly often, maybe once every couple of months or so, but sometimes if my calendar is looking either to empty or too full, I like to schedule out a little time for myself. Whether it’s taking a bath, watching a movie, or sometimes even something I just never do like cleaning my baseboards, it feels good to officially allow myself the time.

-Erica