New House Semi Move-In Day & Anxiety Fun

I should've been doing this all along through our new house journey and all the ups and downs that came with that...plus the multitude of other turmoils that have been happening simultaneously.  It probably would have helped with the stress and angst if I'd been writing about throughout but, oh well, I'll just start now and going forward will tell the story backwards, I guess.

Today we are moving the important furniture from old house to new house which means that I will transition from living in one place to (mostly) living in another place. 

So, a whole bunch of new-ness.

All week I've been excited for this. I've been packing feverishly and chomping at the bit to get to the new house.  I excitedly put in my change of address for the post office to forward mail starting Monday. I ordered a new toaster and a new tablecloth for the patio table the previous owner of the new house left behind.  I was oddly really excited about the new toaster 😁

Today? The day it's actually happening? The day I get to set up my new toaster on my new counter?

Completely filled with anxiety and what if's. 

Man, I hate the what if's...but my brain seems to adore them.

Also, no matter how tired I've been every day, I've been waking up at 4-4:30am with no chance of going back to sleep.

Exhaustion and anxiety.  Yay.

Next week I will be mostly at the new house, unpacking stuff but mostly just resting a lot and trying to start the reset after months of high anxiety.

Overdue Small Update

Will I ever write consistently on this blog?  Who knows. Life got chaotic, again, then I got overwhelmed which renders me frozen and I can't do much of anything so the calendar pages

 

 

fly by and nothing gets posted here. 

I'm currently thawing but I'd like to think I'll be unfrozen very soon.  Writing this today is a step in that direction.

The chaos?  Both the good and bad kind.

The big news is that we bought a house.
Or, a second house.
A second house that will eventually be our only house.
The plan is to keep our current house in NJ and transition slowly to the new house in DE, dividing our time between the two places for the immediate future. 

This is all very exciting and great and wonderful, while also being scary and did I mention scary?

I don't know why I'm scared. I guess it's because I'm usually scared of everything, thanks to having an anxiety disorder.  I've come to realize that it's really, really hard for me to be happy about anything because my anxiety likes to ruin everything for me by switching on the part of my brain that stores all the what if's.

It is not fun, having this kind of brain, by the way.

And I am actually very much looking forward to moving out of NJ and getting back to DE even though it's bittersweet to leave NJ - a place that I love so dearly. 

Like so many others, we're leaving NJ because we're getting priced out; that is to say that the state of NJ and its ridiculous property taxes is just too expensive.  Example: NJ house property tax is 8K, while the DE house is $1200.  Similiarly sized houses.



The area that we're moving to is sort of rural and farm-y, and it's close to the beaches on one side and the Chesapeake area on the other.  I won't run out of things to do and places to visit. Not too shabby.

If only I could shut off the all the what if's that keep popping up, putting a damper on what is a very exciting time.

Part of the getting unfrozen plan is to get back to doing some of the things I used to be passionate about.  Making videos is one of those things and I'm hoping to document the chaos of having two houses, the slow transfer of too much stuff from one to the other, and all the in-between things.

Stay tuned.

Journal Fun Continues...

I'm not going to analyze this too closely to try and figure out why journaling like this is so much freakin' fun...I'm just going to keep doing it and painting and marker-ing and focusing on nonsense while unfocusing on life crap and world crap, etc.

I keep getting older and I still keep on playing (even though society doesn't put a lot of emphasis on playtime for adults. Listen - society is not doing so great right now so I wouldn't put a lot of faith in what "they" say you should or shouldn't be doing!)  

Seriously, don't stop playing. 

Or, re-start playing if you've already stopped.

Making Play Part Of Adult Life

Watercolor Journal - 02.19.24

Watercolor journaling has taken over my life!

I've been struggling with the kind of depression that lets me function but not in a high functioning kind of way and as a result I've no interest in many of the activities that I used to love. 
Except when it involves having a paintbrush or marker in my hand. 
A lot of the time I still struggle with finding the motivation to start a new journal piece or paint an ornament that I'll leave on a park bench for someone to find...but once I find the will to force myself to start, it's easy for me to lose myself in it again.

Oh, I know my watercolor artwork isn't great and I don't care one bit. Because it's fun. Really fun. And calming. And some of the stuff I'm coming up with is amusing the heck out of me and, right now, while I'm living with bleakness, I'll take whatever level of happy I can get.

I have not been able to create any new photo art in a while because I can't get to the mental place* that fuels the creativity I need for it. 
And - I can't lie about this - I hate when I spend a significant amount of time creating a new photo art piece and then I release it to the world via social media...and people just hit the like button and move on.
I need so much more interaction than that.  I'm not saying I need adoration - that actually makes me uncomfortable; I'm saying that I want people to really look at the art and say something - anything - about it. Things like "this reminds me of _______" or "this makes me feel _____"...that sort of thing.

My lifelong affliction - craving connection.

Ironically, "social" media is actually not the place for that or, apparently, for people like me.

]

*Medication is not an option because
(a) I hate taking medication, and
(b) I actually gave in and tried a few and had to come off them immediately because my system is "medication resistant".

Watercolor Journal - 02.14.24

Watercolor Journal - 01 30 24

Watercolor Journal - 01 25 24

Watercolor Journal - 01 16 24