Reviewing a year of failures and few accomplishments

Getting Old Is Easy

The closer I get to forty, the more I start to reflect on my life. As much as I want to be proud of how much I have overcome, I still can’t shake the feeling that I have been robbed. It may be more apt to say that I go back and forth between feeling proud of myself and then feeling angry at how much I have been put through that negatively impacts my life. It is true that blame never resolves anything and though I want to let myself feel what I feel, I also must do this with the goal of resolving the feelings. Even though I have knocked down every time I get my legs under me, I keep getting up even if it is only because I know it pisses my abusers off.

One of the most useful tools I have found is to solve problems backwards when feeling overwhelmed. I am not sure if I initially heard this idea somewhere else and how much I may have adapted to my own style. If you want to do something big, like finish college, but it almost seems unobtainable, it helps to just solve the steps backwards. There was once a time when writing a blog seemed unobtainable, but here I am still struggling through. Sure, there’s still a big lack of consistency, but every tiny step is still a step.

There’s never enough sugar.

All of the things I write about are connected to something that I have or are currently experiencing. Given that, it should be pretty easy to deduce that in addition to struggling with my mental health, I have also been struggling with my physical health. I quit smoking a few years ago and proceeded to gain about 30 pounds. Between being agorophobic, and not having the metobolism boost that I depended on nicotine for, I just can’t seem to lose the weight. So now I’m on a crazy restrictive diet trying to lower my cholesterol and also lose weight. I have also started working out a lot more, and presently all my muscles are angry at me. For this reason, I may post a lot more about health and weightloss related things, but because it is a part of my journey.

I recognize that my own sugar addiction also plays a role in my present size, but I don’t believe that it is all because of what I ate. I have always tried to be at least somewhat healthy, but I fall for quick and easy food a little too often as well. Aside from my American eating habits, I think that the chronic stress of my life has also played a part in it. Stress causes cortisol to release which messes with our hornomes, which in turn effects our metabolism and, from what I understand, even where the fat tends to accumulate.

The overwhelmingly feeling of being useless.

Anyone who subscribes to this blog knows that it doesn’t pay the bills. It actually pays exactly nothing. I write this blog because I want to help people, and express, but I also would like to write for a living. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to finish college while I’ve been fighting for survival this whole time, and it is not easy to get into the writing industry without knowing what you’re doing or having a degree. My initial lifeplan was to go to college for psychology, work in retail or whatever while I did, and work in mental health for a living. My plan has not changed, but now I know that I can’t work in retail.

I tried to do call center customer service and can’t handle the pressure of that either. When I realized that call center work was destroying my mental health I began looking for anything else. I had begun working with employment services that help people with any kind of disability find a job, but almost every agency that has attempted to help just finds retail and customer service jobs. There are limited kinds of environments I can be in, in a limited job market, and none of these busineses want to hire me anyway.

Still, everyone has bills to pay. Sure, a person can apply for disability, but it take a very long time for a person to get approved for disability for mental health reasons, and many people end up homeless before their claim goes through. I have tried finding freelance or contract work, and starting an online business. I’m starting to think that I’m just cursed and there really isn’t any help for it.

I feel a lot of pressure to just take any job that is hiring and hires me, but I know if I did that it would really set back my healing process and I would start to have anxiety attacks all the time again. When I finally quit the last call center job it had got to the point where I was worrying about work ever single moment that I wasn’t there and not really sleeping anymore. I was experiencing work burn out in full force and there wasn’t anything I could do about it while also keeping my job.

Hopefully next year will be better.

I can’t really wallow in pity too much because I’ll get stuck there. I keep trying to get things together and fix things. I have been making more time for writing recently and hopefully will be able to post more regularly. I have numerous posts started, but finishing things is always the biggest hurdle.

I am lucky to have a lot of great people around me, and finally be in a safe environment where I can start to accomplish my dreams at least. The road is slow and full of bumps and potholes. As much as I’m frustrated with the job hunt, my life has still improved greatly over the past year. I am able to accomplish a lot more in a day that I previously was, and my anxiety attacks aren’t as bad as they were. I have even lost a few pounds since I went on a diet. I do have a wonderful significant other who has been with me through the good and bad in all of this. He even helps me a little with this blog (but won’t let me credit him for it). Every day I have to remember to be thankful and not dwell on the bad things.

Let me know about your struggles with mental health and finding employment in the comments! As always, I am always open to suggestions on topics that you would like to see covered so feel free to put a suggestion in the “suggestion box” or leave a request in the comments.

The Diary Of A Flopping Fish and any posts or articles published on Diaryofafloppingfish.com are not reviewed by a therapist or medical or mental health professional. Resources are cited and opinion is opinion. No advice or opinions in any articles replace professional advice from a doctor, therapist, or any other kind of health professional. The author is not a licensed professional of any kind.