I don't know what it is, but I am super duper depressed today. It really started yesterday, like I spent the whole day just trying not to break down and just cry uncontrollably in front of my colleagues. And even when I got home, I just didn't feel like I could break down. I have nothing about which to cry. And today I feel the same way. Just so much doom and gloom. Maybe it's because I'm tired and stressed. Maybe it's because I'm really jonesing to do my own work and not camp work. Maybe it's because I want to be outside, even though it's like a bajillion degrees outside, I'd still like to be out in the sun roasting. Maybe it's because I haven't seen my family a lot lately, and that's what I'm craving. 

I think I have a plan at least for balancing some stuff so that I can feel productive both in terms of my own work and in terms of the work I need to do for part II of the camp.

This afternoon will be devoted to Camp Part II work. I'll get anywhere from 2-3 hours to work on that. I think I can get a lot done. Then tonight while the kids are watching the movie, for the first hour, I will go to my office and work on my research and then try to get some more Camp Part II work done the second hour of the movie. I think if I do that today and tomorrow, I'll feel like I've got something accomplished. Then if I can get more Camp Part II work done Friday afternoon, I should be able to make some progress here on it. 

And maybe that is the root of the general malaise here. Not getting things done. I think for non camp weeks I will have a solid work schedule down. And I've got to get my other calendars set up so that I can have the deadlines right there so I can see the big physical picture of what needs to be done by when, and then I need to learn how to break the big task down into the smaller tasks so that I don't shut down from such giant undertakings and so I can see the progress with the smaller completed items chipping away at the larger ones. 

Before I had the kid, I had been pretty free from depression for a while. Especially with the changes in my diet. I think I'm still struggling a bit from some latent PPD, and it might not even actually be that, but definitely hormone related, and I feel like it probably will take another month maybe for my hormones to figure things back out. I don't think it's been a month yet since I took out the IUD, so that may be a large part of it, too. I think I've had some foods that have had traces of gluten and soy in them, so that's not helping--they're just building on an accumulation of that stuff that's in my body right now. And I'm doing my best with my time and resources with the camp this week, which I why I keep looking forward to next week, a week when I'll have time and that time will slow down a bit, too. I'll be able to get up, work out, see the kid, and then spend the day at home working, cooking, resting, etc. 

While I have a lot of academic and scholarly work to do this summer, I need to heal myself in many ways. I need some rest. I feel burned out from my life, from my career, from my exercise routine. I need to mix that up a bit. I feel like I can do the work I need to do if I am recovering at the same time. The stuff I want to write and work on feels more therapeutic than trying to do that and think about classes and everything else at the same time. I have a July 15th deadline for one article. It's totally doable, if I get serious next week about it, when I can focus on it solely and not have anything else to think about. I'll have time to menu plan and cook. Basically I'm hoping that for the next month I get to have the type of summer I envision having and get as much done as possible, taking a break for my sister's wedding and for Camp Part II, then spending another three weeks getting to work, getting the courses for the Fall ready, and then hopefully being able to take another 2 weeks off before the quarter starts again. 

That's the goal anyhow. We shall see.

I know I'm sounding like a broken record here, but I'm exhausted. It's only Tuesday of week 2 of camp, but damn, I'm wiped out already. And the Magpie is just missing me a lot, so this has been a long day on that front, too. And then she sort of cried herself to sleep. she didn't actually make it to sleep. Sigh. I like the paycheck that comes with camp, and it's only a week, but I always forget how really exhausting it is. And this isn't even the long camp, or rather the super intensive camp.

However, as the only female of the camp, I do feel excluded from a lot of the stuff. The men are kind of cliquish. Meh. I'm not here to bitch about that though.

One of the things I am most looking forward to camp being over is getting back to my own work. I think I've come up with a plan/schedule for the summer after this camp is over. I'm already behind. I've not been able to get my own work done like I had hoped. That is basically due to my spending all of last week, and I mean every.single.damn.day screwing around with this computer. I had to erase it and reboot everything. It seriously took almost 15 hours to get all the OS crap redone and get most everything set up. I still don't have the printer reset. It runs okay. It runs well enough to keep me from buying a whole new laptop. I actually don't need one. This one is nice and clean now and I've got everything stowed away on various drives and stuff. Now it's just a matter of getting organized.

I have been working hard here (harder than I need to) on trying to change the way I am approaching my weight/body issues. I need to return to the basics. Keep it simple. Quit trying new things. As much as I wish I were, I'm not an elite athlete, in the least. And I want to be shredded, but whatever I'm trying still just doesn't seem to be working. It's disheartening. What I need to do then is shift my thinking back to health and performance and let the rest of things fall where they may.

But right now, I'm dying for  twix.

And dying to get back to work on my own stuff. Oh Monday, I long for you. I'll find something positive to post about soon.

In theory, I love the summer time. In practice right now, it has me totally stressed out.

If I can't make my summer go for me like I need it to, then next year is going to be stressful and difficult.

I'm in this weird place between being totally hopeful and optimistic and completely despondent. I feel both confident and on unstable ground lacking in all confidence in every way. I feel both happy and entirely depressed. I just don't know what's wrong with me.

I am entirely focused on my body. This is a large part of the problem. I'm back to being obsessed with it. This is not healthy. I know when I focus on health and fitness the weight comes off. Right now, I am utterly obsessed with the scale, which makes me hate myself for being focused on that, and that's not healthy either.

I feel like I have somehow developed an eating disorder (and I don't say that lightly) in the last few months. This is why I cannot get anything done, and cannot be like anybody from Frozen and just "let it go."

I have to think through this. But first, the kid is awake, so to be continued...

Continued, a day or so later..

I am really really struggling with body image. So much so that it's taking up a lot of my mental energy and actually preventing me from being able to get some stuff done. I've had to do a lot of rethinking about what I'm doing. I mean, in the last three months I have become obsessed with trying to lose weight and in the last eight weeks, I have obsessed over food, had much more food guilt than I normally do, and I weight each thing I eat in terms of "okay, if I eat this, what will the scale say tomorrow? If I don't eat this, it will be lighter."

That is not healthy. Not at all.

I've gotten a bit better in the last few days about this though. It's just that I look like a linebacker in the bridesmaid's dress. For real. I'm not feeling very confident about it.

I hate that I'm so focused on my body/appearance. But, like I said, in the last couple of days I've gotten a little bit better about it.

I'm tired though. I've spent too much mental energy focused on this. I want it to stop.

I'm going to continue to air some grievances here. I am the only female in this camp. All of the guys have been invited out to whiskey night. Guys. That is, everyone but me. I'm a bit irked and feeling a bit shafted. I wouldn't have been able to go anyway; however, the invite would have been nice.

Even though it's only June 3rd, somehow I feel that the summer is already over. Ugh. As much as I love the money, I am feeling the pressure and anxiety of how much I'm not able to work on my own stuff this week and next week. Although, even though it didn't amount to much, I did get a little bit of reading done today during the camp (I will remember to bring my headphones tomorrow), but I have been able to work on getting some pictures and stuff uploaded to another online drive site and put some of the photos on another external drive (I am a HOARDER!) because I'm deathly afraid of deleting them and losing them, but my computer is so full that it is not functioning anymore!

Even though I just bought a new desktop, I now want a new laptop. I was looking at some touch screen laptops online earlier.

I think the desire for new things is tied to a desire to reinvent myself. I've not done so for a while. I feel like, and I believe I have spent a lot of the last two years or so blogging about how I feel like I'm in a rut. I have lots of ideas and stuff, but I have produced anything aside from conference papers since I got pregnant. I'm considerable unhappy still in my post-pregnancy body, and I really wish I weren't. And I just feel irrelevant, in my job, my life, to my friends. I know I'm not to my family, but I do sort of feel that way. I mean, I love, absolutely LOVE being a mom, and I would give my life for that child, and I wish I were a SAHM (although I only wish that so I could have the freedom to read and write most of the time--I'd still actually put her in part time day care), but I feel like for everyone around, that is all that I am. I feel like I am no longer seen as a scholar, professor, athlete, person. And maybe that's it. I think my students, upon learning that I'm a mom, somehow think less of my abilities (uh, they should think more--I created a human, a smart and funny one, too, and I still have a career!). Maybe it's all in my head.

Maybe I just needed some sleep.

So I've had to also, this week, which has been an enormous time suck, but I think in the end has ended up being worth it, but I had to back up everything in multiple places on the laptop because it just sort of has ceased to function properly because I only had like 330 MB of free space left on it, and it seemed that the more that I deleted, the space available decreased with it, oddly. So I just wiped out the entire thing. Now it's like a brand new five year old mac air. It's kind of nice though. Nice and clean. It's almost like having a new computer. So I think I'm going to go buy a new thumb drive for this and the new pc at home to keep everything clean and organized.

But since I've not got this computer mess to deal with, now I don't know what to do with myself during camp. It is the last day. I could try to work/read or something, but maybe I'll just blog all day.

I've started so many posts the last few months and then have either not published them or deleted them or they're still floating around in draft form somewhere.

In part it's because I have a lot of gripes, and I just don't want to air them all publicly. But the alternative is that I've let them fester and stew and that's no good either.

Most of it is just personal and stupid stuff like: is the house ever going to sell? is the kid ever not going to be sick? how am I going to make it through the summer when everyone else seems to be relaxing? will I get my minivan this summer? will I be as productive as I hope this summer? how am I going to do everything? will I ever get these bills paid off? will we ever be able to buy a house here? do I want a house here? do I even have any mobility any more? are these 30 pounds ever going to come off? is it too late to have another kid or by the time I'm ready, will it be too late? do I seriously have to go on another diet? why can't I just go to bed at 8pm every night? why do I have to be so damn vain about my appearance? why can't I get rid of all this crap I have that I don't use and don't need and don't want?

These are the things that seriously keep me awake at night and basically shut me down for part of the day.

I'm back to my "life isn't fair!" bullshit, and I have a crappy attitude that I try to hide from my parents and husband and kid.

However, I know that part of this attitude and quite likely a large part of the weight issue is hormone related. I hate hormonal birth control. It does not work for me, but I'm willing to try things once. The IUD is supposed to be very low and localized. Not even a blip, supposedly, on the hormonal radar. Not for me. I gave it six months. After six months things seemed okay. Then, right on schedule at about 9 months, things just went bad. Weight gain (that won't budge, and that should budge. I am doing everything, and when I say everything, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to for my body to lose weight), major cramps, symptoms that mirrored an ectopic pregnancy and/or cysts, major depression and just a general "fuck you all" attitude. In short, the thing basically fucked up, and the doc said that it is not doing what it's supposed to, things are going on that shouldn't be, and well, at least he confirmed my suspicions rather than making me feel dumb. At one point it involved a 4.5 hour trip to the ER, which is never convenient but even less so the week before the end of the quarter and then another 3.5 hours of doctor's visits in the remainder of the week. Grrrrr. I'm fine, it turns out,  now that the thing is out, aside from the clock ticking on baby #2 (but so many other things have to happen first--Home City home sold and gone, bigger house here, tenure--I'm not having two kids and no job security or a house for that matter). That has me really stressed. We'll see now if the weight will budge now that my hormones should be leveling out a bit. And what also stresses me out is that you know, technically, I'm really not overweight. I'm in a healthy weight range, at the top of it, and I'm pretty stinking fit. But I am not comfortable at this weight. Societal pressures or not, but I don't like myself or the way I look at this weight. There are things that I can't do physically in my workouts because I'm at this weight. And while my legs are strong, it's not the best weight for my knees and for running. And I hate that I want to be thinner, but I do. But it's not just that. I want to feel better, to move better, and to not have baby weight still hanging around me. But I hate my vanity.

In any case, I feel enormous pressure now this summer to get things done. I've made a list. It seems like a doable list between now and October. I have deadlines set. I have some sense of what needs to be done and when. I've sort of got a game plan for how to get the things done. The hardest part for me though is the research and figuring out what I need. I've always been able to "get by" with my shitty research skills, but if I actually want to produce any sort of meaningful scholarship, I've got to actually do research. A little secret: I've never been to our university's library. Yeah. How am I even employed?

And this is all totally related. Obviously, when one feels better about oneself in any one area, then it's a bit easier to the other things to fall into place. Meditation helps. I need to start doing that again. Regularly.

I'm hopeful about what I can get done this summer. I'm also hopeful that I'll have the follow through I need, too. And perhaps I'll be organized enough in such a way that I can put more things on the blog to work through them or even just get to work.

I have a pretty good sense at the "what" that needs to be done this summer. The thing that I often struggle with is the "how." As fond as I am of making to do lists and having plans, I don't know if they ever really help with the "how." I'm not very good at putting together research plans. And that's what I've got to work on in the next couple of days here before "summer" camp starts next week.

What I need to work on today is the camp stuff. And I've got a good sense of that at least.

I also, right now, am setting myself up with constant reminders/motivational stuff (not like motivational but stuff to keep me motivated) so that I can stay on task.

I'm also trying to work on balance. Rather than just wholly immersing myself in research reading, I am actually taking the time to pleasure read, which is something that I just don't get to do.

I'm also trying to prioritize tasks. Rather than working on everything all at once, I'm working on trying to figure out what what should get done when so that I don't become overwhelmed thinking or acting like it all needs to get done NOW! But I also want to enjoy summer, too.

Ack, so much to figure out.

After a craptastic quarter, in all aspects of my life, not just academically, it has become clear that I need to do some revamping.

I hate making declarations like "I'm going to do this!" because public accountability doesn't do much for me, and the moment I declare something is a sure fire way for me not to accomplish something.

Right now, I'm feeling hopeful about the summer and what I can accomplish. I would say that not only is my plate full, but it's overflowing.

I'm a bit stressed. Personally, there's a lot of pressure, too. The house in Home City still hasn't sold, and we're kind of limbo with that. The birth control I was on did not do what it was supposed to do, which is rare, but happens. Instead, it just sort of went haywire. And then when I got really sick (five weeks nearly!) and was on steroids, that just blew everything out of proportion in my body. My hormones are whack, but on the mend. So that's a bit stressful, too.

Anyway, it just means I have a lot to accomplish between now and September.