Done last week (20140928 Su - 1004 Sa)

[mdlbear]

Not such a good week. Productive, but not fun.

I did have some good times with Colleen, going for a drive last Sunday, and to the Northwest Tea Festival yesterday. Colleen's favorite vendor, Silk Road, was a no-show, so she used the money she didn't spend there to buy us lunch. A really great outing.

I spent last Sunday updating old laptops -- they're all old and the ones capable of running Windows 7 really suck at it, but they all make good Linux boxes. I spent the rest of the day working my way through the piles of accumulated bills. Yesterday I spent the evening switching online accounts off of credit cards and onto debit cards.

Today I'll tackle the medical bills, which I've been ignoring for way too long.

Naomi pointed out, rather sharply, that my biggest problem isn't being stupid (though I've done a lot of that), but my habit of ignoring the hard stuff and hoping it will go away. Which, of course, is massively stupid, since ignoring things like that only makes them progressively worse. Which makes them harder to face. And so on.

This is what's called a vicious circle. With BIG SHARP TEETH. I think I need an icon for that.

Oddly, the fact that I've cut back on my antidepressant doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. This leads me to suspect that I should drop the SSRI altogether and switch to something with a different mechanism. Possibly tryptophan.

Links, as usual, in the notes.

0928 Su
  * up 7:00; W=213
  * more updating of laptops.  Starbright's keyboard really sucks.
  * Drive with Colleen.  Just up to Aurora Village and back.
    % Got bad at the end when she was disappointed to get home as early as we did.  Walked
      around the block rather than losing it, which I was close to.  Emmy cheered her up.
  * Massive inroads into the pile of bills and statements, though nowhere near enough.
    Will be spending a lot of tomorrow paying some and tabulating the rest.
  : I am probably going to have to forego Orycon.  :P
  % tense and vaguely upset
    
0929 Mo
  * up 5:30; W=213
  * contributed to Tomorrow's Songs Today: The History of Filk Music | Indiegogo (HSX account)
  * Took credit cards out of wallet, put UB debit card in.  (my fingers typed "debug")
  * Slightly pulled calf muscle running across a street on the way to the bus stop
    Stretching helped. 
  * Make spreadsheet.  Good start, anyway.

0930 Tu
  * up 6:30; W=211.6
  @ solarbird | the story you may have missed regulatory failure in banking. surprise
  @ I was born in the year of the Pig Fire pig, to be exact.
    some of the descriptions are uncannily apt.

1001 We
  * up 6:06; W=213.4
  ~ 9:15 am Richard at Clearpoint Seattle office
  ~ humira

1002 Th
  * up 6:35; W=213.2
  * pay parking tickets
  * order tabs
  * call MassMutual to borrow against life insurance.  $1266 interest due Sept. 9
  @ 6 habits of excellence to gain contributors for your open source project |
    Opensource.com (LWN)
  % It was pointed out -- rather sharply, and deservedly so -- that my problem is not that
    I'm stupid but that I'm avoidant.  My way of dealing with stuff I don't like is to
    ignore it and wish it would go away.  Instead it gets worse, of course.  Blarg.
  * HUMIRA
  @ ysabetwordsmith | How to Let Go of Things

1003 Fr
  * up 6:10; W=214
  * productive day at work.  Deployment set up.
  * pay bills:  Chase and Wells Fargo cards.

1004 Sa
  * up 7ish; W=213.2; Shower
  @ Enough With Dystopias: It's Time For Sci-Fi Writers To Start Imagining Better
    Futures | Kathryn Cramer (ysabetwordsmith)
    Hieroglyph - Kathryn Cramer, ed. - eBook
  % I just noticed that the cats can make me laugh.  Consistently.  That's kind of huge.
  @ Northwest Tea Festival
  * Northwest Tea Festival - Fisher Pavilion, Seattle Center
    Not as big as Colleen expected, and her favorite vendor (Silk Road) didn't show, so
    afterward she took me out to lunch at the Collections Cafe.  Yummy.  Also great
    people-watching, and overall a delightful outing.
  @ The Lies It Tells | The Shadow Sanctuary (firecat)
    also 12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes and
    Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome:
    randomised controlled trial | The BMJ
  * Transfer thestarport.org to DH from GD

Comments

[kyrielle]

Vicious circles suck.

I run into that problem with the more prosaic (and less financially painful) issue of cleaning the kitchen. NB: this has resulted in ants, to my horror, once. (As an aside, ants in my kitchen WILL kick me out of my "can't face it" mode into "OMG scrub all the things can't do anything else IIIIIICK!" mode. As methods of doing so, it sucks.)

What I have found often works is to get someone else (Scott, in this case) to help me break the cycle: "Scott? I need to clean the kitchen, but there's just too much. Could you empty the dishwasher of the clean dishes, please?"

And when he does, there's a vacuum I can move the dirty dishes into, and then the sink is free for the hand-wash-only dishes, and so on. It's true that if _I_ emptied the clean dishes this would also happen, but it feels easier if the first step comes from someone else (and it makes me feel like I really ought to do it since he got me started).

I have no idea if similar things would work for you or what that would work out to in financial issues - but something to think about. Less the specific strategy (unless it will work for you, in which case use it!) and more the "what head game will work to get me past this / get me moving?"

It took a few different attempts before I found what worked for me. (So does setting a timer: "I will clean for 15 minutes. As soon as the timer goes off, no matter -what- is going on, I can finish the immediate action - for example set the current dish down where it belongs - and stop.")

[mdlbear]

Thanks. That's a good technique -- I usually get my daughter to unload the dishwasher, because I prefer loading it to emptying it, for example. The financial thing appears to be largely a matter of forming good habits and sticking to them, but it's a lot more complicated.

I sometimes use the tag 15min for my decluttering efforts, though I usually find myself taking a great deal longer once I finally get into it. Of course, that's often a way of not dealing with something harder.

[tagryn]

Thanks for passing along the link to Kele Lampe's "The Lies It Tells." That was remarkable, and hit home for me in a number of places.