I’ve been mostly absent from Joy & Moxie for several months due to a perfect storm of stresses, season-changes & soul-wanderings.

September 2017. My grandmother (Nanny) and last living grandparent passed away. So began a season of mourning and the excavation of our memories and her house.

Winter 2017-2018. As I endeavored to finish my novel, winter set in. As did SAD. The darkness takes a toll on my energy and my spirits. Christmas was subdued. Work at the Department of Insurance seemed to drag.

January 2018: I finished my novel, The Confessions of Sive Kear, and spent the first week of January reading it aloud and editing it. The rest of January was a dull fallow wasteland. I was burnt out but restless. After so many years with Sive’s constant voice in my head, she was suddenly quiet. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I did what one does and reread Harry Potter.

And then came February…

February 19th was supposed to be a day of rest and quiet away from work, the capstone to a three-day weekend. It was Presidents Day, one of the holidays we state employees get off. An oasis day in the middle of winter. I planned to sleep in, have a leisurely morning and enjoy a movie with a friend later on that day. Instead, I was awoken at 6:30 a.m. by an early-riser friend alerting me to the news that the building in which my department, the Dept of Insurance, was located was on fire.

I spent the day anxious – unknowns make me anxious. And while I enjoyed Black Panther immensely, I was distracted by the thought of what tomorrow would bring and the fresh chaos awaiting me. I selfishly kept thinking about my division’s new remodeled area. I’d just moved into what could be called an office for the first time in the 9 years I’d worked as the receptionist. They’d installed the pull-down door just the week before. Someone had gifted me an orchid. I liked being near a window. I liked the quiet, the spacing, my newly organized drawers. After years of being in a cubicle box and right by the elevator (and in range of the traffic of 40 people getting on and off the elevator at frequent intervals throughout the day), it was fantastic. Everyone in my division was enjoying More Space and quiet, just beginning to organize a wall of files. And then the fire happened.

I’m no stranger to disruption by fire. I belong to a church that experienced the total loss of the church building in 2007, and then another electrical fire in our current building in 2016, which had us worshipping at another facility until Christmas and then in our mini-gym until Easter. It was a massive disruption to normal life, a character building exercise. Still… it was different this time, and much harder.

We began what I’ve described as the DOI Diaspora on February 20th, reporting for duty in the basement of the state office building. Some of us would jokingly refer to it as the “dungeon.” Thirty out of a hundred people were able to come in, crammed in a conference room and crawling all over each other. The main switchboard was routed to someone’s cell phone until the switchboard was set up. The calls came in as usual for at least four different areas and soon the place was alive with noise. There was always a problem with the printers, with the phones, with all of our stuff still sitting around at the Terminal building, coordinating recovery and moving efforts. Those first few weeks were exhausting. They do not call it the SOB for nothing.

Having gone from a quiet, stress free workspace to loud, teeming chaos in the space of a few days took a lot out of me. I was relearning exactly what it meant to be a highly-sensitive introvert and what I needed to function. That “box” on the fourth floor I’d just escaped from? A distant memory. Nothing could be as bad as a sunless conference room in the depths of the bustling, crowded state office building. You learned quickly who was obnoxious and who was an ally; who took loud personal calls; who was hard of hearing; everyone’s breaking points; who was most likely to provide a communal bag of chocolate. We tripped over each other constantly. We were there for over a month. It was an introvert’s hell and there was no way around it.

Being in close quarters during a busy mountains-of-mail season, on hard-on-the-lumbar plastic chairs with phones ringing incessantly, I needed the exactly opposite: quiet and space. And sunlight. But this last one didn’t come into it except in spurts – this spring was record-breaking for its coldness. The other two were easier. At break times, and at lunch I escaped. Literally escaped, ran home, luxuriated in the quiet peace of my apartment and my sweet little cat. Living downtown saved my life. The SOB happens to be 4 blocks and 10 minutes from home.

If anything, this unpleasant season reinforced several truths about being a writer who is also an introvert and a hypersensitive… things that I’d taken for granted, ignored, chastised myself over. I will never do so again. Otherwise, I break down into an anxious mess.

 

 

One: Not Writing.

Not only is it okay that I wasn’t writing, it was completely necessary. There are those who say “you must write everyday” to actually “be” a writer. But if my energy isn’t there, it isn’t there. If I’ve spent most of the last year immersed in a project, my creative well is most likely dry. I had nothing more to give. My brain is tired, just like one muscles would be after a strenuous marathon. Therefore, a rest and a reset is essential. I had to fight not to feel guilty about this, the message of “work hard, dammit” was ingrained in me. I did work hard, dammit, and now I’m going to nap for a few months. Okay?

Two: Respect the HSP.

When I was a kid I was told dismissively and repeatedly – and if we’re honest, still told – that I’m “too sensitive.” Too sensitive by whose standards, I ask? I’m not the only introverted HSP to hear it. It implies the fault is on our end, that something is wrong with us, when in reality we were made this way – it’s in our very DNA. It’s how we respond to the world; and it means that we are more attuned to the nuances of our environment.

I am easily overstimulated, and especially hypersensitive to noise. If there are five conversations going on in a room, I will most likely be unable to concentrate. I will also be exhausted by the end of the day. Therefore, if I go home and crash and need to cancel plans, so be it. If I need to flop on the couch and watch The Office for the rest of the evening just to turn my brain off, that’s okay. The body knows what it needs.

During the day, getting outside the dungeon and walking was the biggest help. Despite the awful cold. I realized I’d rather be out in the cold than trapped in a room with 30 people. Outside at least I could hear myself think, and the exercise revived my energy a bit.

It also made me rethink church and the adult education hour there. Sunday worship and fellowship is hard on the hypersensitive introvert. That’s 2+ hours of People and Talking. I’m not a misanthrope. I love being able to catch up with my friends. But. A full hour of Talk before church (at adult Sunday school) leaves me drained before the service even begins, especially if there is a lot of discussion during said class. This hit me particularly hard during the SOB season, and I’d be so drained that the rest of my Sunday would involve sleeping and zombie-paced activities. It takes a physical toll. It’s as if the presence of all those other people draws on my energy and drains me faster than a iPhone with twenty apps left open.

To conserve energy, I took (and am still taking) a break from the adult ed hour. This way I am more focused and alert during worship. There are plenty of opportunities to be “social” and not just on Sunday. I have to respect my own limits, and the fact that my limits might look different from others’.

Three: Respect the SAD.

Seasonal Affective Disorder. It is a real thing. It doesn’t just happen to other people. It happens to me. I’ve taken to saying lately that I must be part plant, because I feel significantly better when the sun is out, and I feel listless and weak when the sky is heavily overcast. Thick clouds make me feel trapped and pressed down, almost claustrophobic. I can’t change the weather, but I can 1.) be nice to myself – treat myself to a coffee (even everyday, if need be), a nice dinner, another episode of that thing I’m watching, whatever, 2.) make sure I rest, 3.) use the happy light whenever I can.

Four: Look for joy.

A lack of joy was my chief complaint. Some of it was post-Nanny. Some of it was due to a long, miserable winter which lasted until mid-April. I was anxious and depressed and sick of it. I had to rediscover my joys again, at work and at home.

In March, the DOI moved to a more-permanent temporary building. After the SOB, I welcomed the big open receptionist desk. The building we’re in – the Star Building – doesn’t have the room that Terminal did for us, and my coworkers are either in cubicles or sharing offices. It is not what we’re used to. And I was (am) determined to make the most of it. For example, there is a skylight over my desk and nearby a great view of St. Paul Methodist Church across the street. On Fridays, they play the bells. Also the Star Building is closer to home than the Terminal building was: a 15 minute walk as opposed to 25-30. I still walk home at lunch for the peace and quiet and the exercise.

Another source of joy came from an unexpected quarter: abandoned plants that were taken from the Terminal building, repotted and sitting quietly in the break room. I adopted an aloe, a jade and cuttings of a purple secretia (also know as the wandering Jew or inch plant). There is also a spider plant in a nearby office that produced babies like crazy, so I am finding joy in getting them to root and planting them. The jade, the aloe and the secretia stretch up and up towards the light, thriving. At home, the plants I’d taken back from my office at the Terminal building are also thriving, especially the giant peace lily and my coworker’s pothos. (Don’t worry, I keep those two up and out of Beatrix’s reach.) I repotted my purple oxalis, put it in the window and it’s growing like crazy.

 

 

Joy is spying on a pair of cardinals with binoculars. Joy is rearranging teapots and glass bottles and kitchen items. Joy is watching my cat snooze in a sunbeam. Joy is wearing a favorite outfit in a new way. Joy is fresh flowers from Trader Joe’s. Joy is liking myself again.

Five: Coming to Terms with INFP.

This Myers-Briggs determination is not all of me, but it’s been a helpful tool. I realize that this aspect of my personality might explain why I write novels: I think in the long-term. I marinate in ideas. I write to process the world and rewrite to continue to understand what I’ve learned. While I am often full of ideas and am processing and processing and mulling and processing them, I can’t often articulate them, and I question myself if I try to draw them out too quickly. I am not a debater. I won’t go into battle with my opinions and heart-beliefs when others won’t listen. Call it self-preservation, not cowardice. I’m an observer; I do not stir the waters because they’re already turbulent enough.

I’m spacy. I forget where I’ve put my keys, sunglasses, phone. This doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Silence does not mean I have nothing to say, that my brain is empty. Call me a bleeding heart, and that only means that I have compassion. Thick skin means you’re desensitized to the suffering of others. I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to be anything other than who I am.

Confession: I’m not a great blogger. I am intimidated by the noise of the internet, discouraged by a lack of readers and my own reluctance to go chasing them. Sometimes I’m ready to let the domain expire and move on with my life. And then out of nowhere the thought comes back to me: keep trying, keep writing thoughtfully. I am here. The world isn’t any less scary than it was months ago. In fact, you could argue that it’s worse. But it’s not going to get better by my running away. I can only continue to aim, as always for joy and moxie. And why not do so here?