Our beloved Bouvier des Flandres died a year ago (very unexpectedly: he was only three, started breathing oddly one day, and the next day we had to put him down because he had metasticized heart and lung cancer 
). I will miss my boy for the rest of my life, he was a one of a kind.
All to say: he was a really big boy, so we replaced him with two smaller pibble pups – so some happiness came of tragedy. Therefore: SQUEEEEEEEE for you!!
BUMP!!
It’s been 7 months - how are everyone’s life improvements going?
I am standing just that liiittle bit straighter than I used to, nearly cracked my Goal B (wrists and elbows can touch the floor above my head lying on my back - only at my inlaws 'cos they have boofy carpet :P) and can do the over-the-shoulder fingertip touch for the first time in some time.
On the other hand, health professionals still have a tendency to say “wow you’re stiff…you should really Do Something about that” unprompted.
So - who else has got an update?
I missed this thread the first time around.
Life improvements? Hmm. I got laid off in October, and I am now looking for a new (ideally full-time with benefits) job. The news a few days ago was that the unemployment rate was the lowest in 41 years, so that’s got to help.
But the big thing is an internal shift. I think this is directly following on from my coming out as bi late last spring and summer; as I said then, a vast iceberg of guilt and shame about being me has started to break up. I spent so much time as a kid trying to be invisible, trying to be someone – anyone – other than me… and now it’s like it worked only too well, and I can’t get an employer’s attention to save my life.
However, I have started to feel more comfortable in being me. I have started to wear more colours. I have rainbow bracelets on my left wrist. I bought some dye to colour jeans the way I want them. I want to get some properly-fitting clothes. And pierced ears are in the plans again (I had them a long time ago).
I look at old pictures of myself and wonder whether I might have had a chance socially if things had been different internally for me. Maybe I had enough looks then?
When I mentioned to my counselor that I stopped having frequent nightmares after going on anti-depressants, she said that that having that many nightmares was one of the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. Another is anxiety and fear. And my basic reaction to people has mostly been to be afraid of them.
The only thing that could have caused this is the bullying I endured as a kid. So yeah, my childhood may have given me PTSD.
But things are changing. I love wearing a rainbow bracelet; I look at it and it cheers me up. For the first time ever, most of the time, I feel no general shame or unworthiness in being me. I still have local short-term sadnesses, but the overall tenor of my mood has shifted upwards. Thank you, anti-depressants!
Why do I go onto all this? It’s dramatically changed how I approached my job search. The day after the layoff, I started my EI (unemployment benefits) application. The day after that, I called the student-loan people and told them what was going on, and they suspended my loan for six months!
It took a month to get all the paperwork from my former (part-time) employer, but I did, and my EI benefits are calculated based on the weeks I earned the most in the past year. So I have enough money to buy things, go to Toronto for job interviews, etc.
Now I am gradually getting more social. I updated my LinkedIn profile. I am getting in touch with old friends and acquaintances. I am going regularly to meetings at the job-search place. I am learning new skills (Blender, the 3-D modeling program) and re-learning old ones (Adobe Animate) in order to build things for my portfolio. I have re-joined LIFT, the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto, so that I can take workshops and go back to the screenwriting group.
And, following a report on the news, I tracked down a company that is an employment agency for people on the autism spectrum, or with similar struggles (in my case, face blindness). I’ve applied to a couple of jobs there.
That led me to applying to be on the TV program “Employable Me”, which follows people with various mental or physical struggles as they look for work. I had a Skype interview with them just before the holidays, and they said they were recording the interview, and they also wanted my portfolio and samples of my artwork. They would send all of them to ‘the network’ for further evaluation. So now I am waiting to hear more.
I seem to be a lot more confident in being social. And job-hunting is an essentially social thing.
It isn’t that I couldn’t have done these things before, but there seems to be a much more consistently active solidity about how I am doing things. I am taking care of things proactively. At the job-search place, we had a discussion about cold calling, and afterwards I thought, “If I have to do the unnatural and unpleasant, why not reach for the impossible?” Why not design the ideal job and see whether it exists? That’s now part of what I am doing.
Hopefully I will get a job and move back to Toronto by the spring… And then after I get settled, I can think about dating.
Those seem like pretty significant life improvements. Congratulations!
Sunspace, congratulations on coming to terms with, and embracing your sexuality. And good to see you here! I’m certainly not equating the two, but I experienced a bit of sexual awakening myself in 2015 and embracing and sharing it made me feel more like a whole person.
Turns out personal training is really expensive. I had some physical therapy for my back but then had to shift to physical therapy for something else. I’ve had a slew of health issues I’ve been trying to address. I found out last week that I probably have a hormone deficiency. Still waiting on blood work for confirmation.
I started going to Orange Theory fitness in early December and I really like it. It’s a very intensive workout so I started at just two days per week. I haven’t been going over the holiday so today will be my first day in a couple weeks. Since I started doing that, I haven’t had much back pain.
The focus this year should really be on writing. I worked on fiction an average of 10 hours a week in 2017 and I’d like to improve on that. My husband got me a professional editor for Christmas, so I really need to finish revising my novel. I know it’s fear holding me back. And by fear, I mean unbridled terror. The novel is actually how I came to terms with the aforementioned sexuality, it deals with BDSM and trauma (I wouldn’t call it erotic fiction though… Just two sex scenes) but it’s a science fiction love story deeply thematic on the issue of sexuality and how to navigate power dynamics when consent is paramount. I honestly think my fear is less about the content and more about facing the reality of the publishing industry.
Thanks, Spice Weasel and Aspidistra!
Spice Weasel, it sounds like you are on a good path as well. I think I definitely need more exercise too. And to hear that someone else is writing is encouraging.
After losing 40 pounds two years ago, I put about 30 of it back on last year, mainly through stress eating. Between my son’s issues and politics, I allowed myself to backslide. I made the decision last month that while the president is a moron, there’s not much I can do about it and will just have to let things run their course. So I gave up on getting riled up over his latest inane utterance, and just shrug it off. As for my son: there is also little I can do for him. He needs to make his own path out of his self-destructive behavior.
I’m down four pounds since last week.