Stepping Out

Made my morning meeting. I wasn’t sure that was going to happen when I went to sleep last night, but it worked out fine. Skipped the noon meeting but I’m okay with only doing one team meeting per day, and I wanted a minute to see Shanda before she left. Got my email and whatnot done, and there were no new SRs another than the one I sent up yesterday. No meetings at all tomorrow, which is always great. I might connect to the brownbag at noon for extra credit but that likely won’t require that I come off mute.

I had a hard time getting to SR work this afternoon but after chores and a dog walk I eventually got to it. Made good progress when I did – resolved 2, discussed a 3rd, and dispatched the 4th for off-team work. The only one I didn’t touch was the one that came in today. I’ve still got some nasty research project in that 3rd one but everything else is on track to resolve on the next couple of days. If the incoming load stays low the rest of the week should be light.

Shanda finally agrees that the last few days have been tough. Which is a great relief – it feels like I’m being gaslighted when we disagree about stress levels. Household stress is still elevated but it does feel like we’re back on the same side of it, and moving back toward nominal. Dog is a bit calmer too – still twitchy but say with me for much of the day, and paid attention to me when we walked (at least the first time out).

Shanda and I did get to start talking about how I want to approach avoidance list items – have a better process so they don’t create a list in the first place. I got into the habit of letting them be – when crisis was daily life it just wasn’t possible to keep current. But months later I still have to prioritize the one item I can hope to discuss in the next 9 days, and there’s too much to get done for that schedule to work. I can’t merely accept the non-engagement – I can’t provide the current level of support unless we have better integration. So I’m gonna make it my priority to demand at least basic logistical integration, just like I would expect from a roommate. I’m not sure how to make that go without some stress on all sides but it has to happen so I’ll figure something out. It seems plausible, if I can convince myself that there’s a safe enough day to talk about it. Not today but hopefully we can start later this week and build our way up.

Talked about the framing for relationship practice too – how to make it seem more urgent. I don’t think I can do a lot to make it safer, but maybe I can make it rank higher on the priority list. I’ve heard it described as a priority but maybe some more direct attachment – and some discussion of the risks of inaction – would help connect the pieces and get some buy-i. I think step 1 is to burn down the avoidance list and work out a process to keep it empty – until then it’s hard to do anything with multiple steps. And this will have lots of steps. Hopefully a lifetimes worth.

I’ve got plenty of checklist for tomorrow’s therapy. I want to get advise about the avoidance list and ask if they’re up to speed on EMDR (which might be fast if the answer is no). And we ready had plans for a health monitoring framework. It’s starting to feel like real research, when I’ve got 4 topics and not enough time. But I’m hoping I can find a feeling for the avoidance list that lets us LI about it, so we can still get through something I know will be productive. I’ll have to chew on that tomorrow and see if I can pull my fears and stress about it together before my session.

I tried to sit with V for a while today. I was a little too unfocused myself to be as useful as I would have liked. But I’m still happy to have done what I could, and I don’t think it was entirely useless. I’ll try to do better tomorrow. I’m expecting my day will be eaiser so I should have more brain space for it.

J finally popped up today. I tried a new approach late last week and got some initial engagement this morning. I had to be quite specific about what I was hoping for but it did work, which was reassuring after several weeks of silence. Like all my communication it started with an apology for not talking ¹I continue to be amazed at how many people start messages to me with an apology for not sending other messages. Do I make you feel guilty somehow? Is that a normal human thing I just don’t understand? Does this happen to everyone? I’m always so excited to be involved in talking that I can’t imagine being upset that it didn’t happen before, … Continue reading. But they jumped right in on the assignment I gave. We’ll see if that holds up. Lots of people can talk to me for a couple of rounds before they disappear, but so far very few stick with it past that. I’m glad it’s going though, even if it turns out to be temporary.

Didn’t talk to M today. Mostly I tried not to worry about the sort term. Today’s configuration should let Eggsy be at least good buffer support, since they haven’t got many options for withdrawal and the time line is short, and that could be good help. Plus I’ve got plenty of long term worry to keep me busy and no where near enough information to guess how the day went. But I am still worried, particularly that you’re weeks into a pile of different stresses. Even if things are pointed clearly up – and it would be easy for them not to be – it’s a lot to dig out from, and you’re still so focused on The Plan.

Did paint prep today for the bedroom. Got everything off the walls including permanent fixtures. Ordered supplies – we still need to get actual paint but I think everything else is on its way. The room needs to be cleared out a little so we can be messy but I think it’s just shuffling things around to make that happen. We also got the bed frame delivered today. It looks like only one of the boxes is super heavy – the rest were carried in by one dude. So the whole project is chugging along.

Had a minute for TV. Watched an episode of Better Call Saul (Netflix). The heist plots in S03E03 “Sunk Costs” are far too complicated to be sensible – they value secrecy in a way that doesn’t really make sense – but it was still lots of fun. And it was an excuse to give us shots like this [fig 1]. I’m too lazy to grab video clips but the outdoor time lapse that show does is amazing. There was a day into twilight sky shot of moving clounds, punctuated with jet exhaust trails that slash across the clouds in one direction and then flow with them in another. Mr. Robot (USA Networks) is often beautiful but this show just soaks us in careful, patient, stunning cinematography. It almost makes me imagine that people could live in that desert.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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