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Confidence and Paranoia

Been busy the past few weeks with everything and yet nothing in particular, but busy enough to keep from writing.

A few weeks ago we had a last-minute project at work where we needed to visualize incident locations on a map. I put it together and it was presented to the agency administrator and he loved it, so that was good for me and my team.

Later, my boss called me over to his desk. I was worried at first (because that’s how I roll, just immediately assuming the worst) but it turned out that he just wanted to chat. We got to talking about running and he wanted to know about where to go to buy running gear and what marathons I’ve run, stuff like that.

Flash forward to yesterday, my boss called me over. Again I immediately thought it was going to be something bad (I woke up late and was late getting to work because of bus and train issues), but remembered that that’s how I immediately react and started calming myself down by thinking it was going to be nothing serious after all. Turned out that as a reward for building trust with the client and doing a good job my boss was surprising me with a gift card for $200 for Georgetown Running Company. That was definitely a surprise!

Speaking of running, I haven’t been running lately because my foot has been bothering me. I keep meaning to call this sports medicine doctor I found to get it checked out but I guess now I definitely need to get it checked out since I have a gift card to spend, haha.

After last week’s therapy session I bought myself an iPad Mini to use specifically for work. I had been keeping track of work projects in my OmniFocus account, and though I’m pretty good about keeping work and personal parts of my life separate, finding work projects mixed with my personal life and vice-versa kept bugging me. Since I’m taking on more responsibilities at work now (one of my coworkers is moving away, and I’m taking over his projects), I wanted something to help me keep track of things, and since Micro Center had a sale on the 16 GB iPad Mini 2 ($50 less new than what Apple was selling it for) I went ahead and bought one and fixed it up for only work use to keep work and personal electronic records separate. I also started moving some of my work notes into a work-specific Evernote notebook to help me keep track of everything as well. I think that using note and reminder systems that I’m familiar and comfortable with and have been using for several years will help me keep tabs on things.

We had a system release at work this past weekend so I ended up working 12 hours on Saturday and another four hours on Sunday which meant that I didn’t have much of a weekend to speak of. Worked Monday through Wednesday, and another three hours today, making 43 hours this week. At least I got the rest of today off, and I’m off tomorrow through Sunday, so I’m ready to enjoy this three-and-a-half day weekend.

At this weeks’ therapy appointment we got to talking about reasons why I might try to hold myself back, and how I used to be a lot more carefree and now I’m a lot more reserved and serious. “Party Glenn” and “Serious Glenn” we called my personalities and we wondered what Party Glenn would think of the current Serious Glenn, or what they might say if they were to have a conversation. It got me to thinking about the Red Dwarf episode “Confidence and Paranoia”, actually. I need to sit down and think of how I’ve changed and why I tend to play things more safe now than I used to. I mean, I used to go to Howl At The Moon all the time and had no qualms about jumping up on stage and being the crazy guy in the bar, but now I can’t imagine doing anything like that, as if I have an image to project or a reputation to maintain. Even things like going on a road trip somewhere or travel somewhere on my own I’d find difficult to do now. It’s as if those are things that I’d have to find a reason why I should do them, and if I can’t come up with a reason then there’s no purpose. I’m not even sure if it was a sudden or gradual change from Party Glenn to Serious Glenn, only that there has been a change, and that current Serious Glenn plays things much more safe and cautious than Party Glenn ever had.

Serious Glenn

I wonder if I secretly feel like I have something to prove? I kind of feel like I would have been farther along in life than I am now, like people I know from high school or college are farther along in their careers than I am or making more money and I need to catch up, like it wasn’t that long ago that I was still living at home with the parents and meanwhile I have friends and family members starting families and buying houses. It’s like I’m trying to apply myself as hard as I can in order to play catch-up, but there’s no finish line, no concrete goal, nobody competing against me other than myself. If I get a promotion, if I buy my first home, will I feel fulfilled? I don’t know. What would I do after that? I don’t know either. Could I relax? Would I be able to relax? I’m sure I’d find some other shortcoming I’d want to rectify and start fixating on that.

Party Glenn

I remember when I used to do things for the fun of it. I did things like going to England for a weekend. I went on multi-state roadtrips to visit friends. I’d go to visit girlfriends. I’d go out to bars with friends or coworkers and would sleep on their floor if things got too party. I snuck up to NYC on the train and met the Secretary General and a movie star in the UN. I’d fly to visit old coworkers and go to Spring Training baseball games. Fun stuff like that!

Serious Glenn

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older? My priorities have changed?

Party Glenn

Your priorities might have changed, but you still need to make time for fun.

Serious Glenn

What I’ve been doing is fun. I like learning new things and trying new hobbies.

Party Glenn

But it’s not fulfilling. You’re at home all the time. You need to get out more.

Serious Glenn

But… a lot of the stuff that I enjoyed doing before on my own, I’ve found how much more fun they are to enjoy with someone. And it’s hard for me to try to meet people now.

Party Glenn

You need to be more confident. You need to work on that list of things you’re good at like Dr. Connell told you to do. You’ve started to find some Meetup groups to join for different interests, and you’ve joined that social sports league. Those are good starts! You’re not going to be the only one at events like those who feels intimidated about meeting new people.

Anyway, that seems like a good enough start of a conversation. I should really get to bed about now.

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Is this true?

I went to the psychologist again today; I really am enjoying my weekly visits with her. It’s funny, though I’m still writing on my blog, I feel like my psychologist sessions have basically taken the place of having open comments on my website. I write what I’m feeling, then have a discussion with her about how I felt the week before. It’s a pretty good setup.

Today we spent time talking about relationships. While I’d like to be in a new relationship, I find that I am holding myself back to do activities on my own, and I’m not sure if it’s because I just now prefer doing things on my own or if it’s because I’m afraid of entering into a relationship and all that a relationship entails.

We discussed how I tend to have a “grass is always greener” outlook where I start to think that I could do better with someone else. Why bother getting into a relationship if I’m just going to try to seek out one that’s better? For that, she said that I need to reassure myself that that’s how I tend to think and brush thoughts like those aside – I don’t need to pay as much attention to thoughts like those as I have in the past. Just chalk it up to “yeah, that’s how I tend to think” and move on.

Same with how I’ve found myself holding myself back, thinking that I don’t have much worth to bring to a relationship – in cases like that I need to ask myself: “Is this true?” She said that while I may find exceptions to every rule I’d tend to discover that things aren’t always how I think they are, so I guess it’s mostly a matter of retraining myself how to think and focus my attention on what I know to be true rather than what I think the truth actually is. She brought up examples of my personality just from what she’s learned about me: that I’m kind, and caring, and thoughtful, for example.

With others’ feelings and opinions, I can’t be responsible for how they feel or react, only for how my own thoughts and feelings, so I need to put less stock in what other people might think of me.

I used to be good at not thinking much of what other people thought of me, but maybe at some point I just started to get self conscious? I mentioned that basically I want to get like the main character in Office Space when he asks a waitress he likes out: he asks her out and adds something like “but if you don’t want to, that’s fine too.” It’s that sort of easygoing approach to situations I’d like for myself and need to work toward.

Speaking of working toward things, I had also mentioned that I work best when there’s some goal involved. It’s silly to assume that x + y = relationship, but if ‘x’ is “getting used to uncomfortable situations” and ‘y’ is “becoming more involved in activities I enjoy”, then you can start to see how working towards those can put me in a better place for starting a relationship and finding someone who shares the same interests. Like I told my psychologist, I don’t know if I want a relationship in 5 minutes or 5 years, but I know that what I’ve been doing to improve myself intellectually won’t improve me socially. I also feel like withdrawing myself into my own projects isn’t healthy long-term either. So, to fix that, I need to figure out ways to find people who are also interested in what I’m interested in doing and see how things go from there.

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Winning a motoring award

I got my first-ever “motoring award” ((Speeding citation.)) in the mail yesterday. 36 in a 25. $100. Figures that this would occur just when every other speed camera in the city is apparently broken. Oh well.

I decided last night to upgrade the software on my server just before bed. Well, that was a mistake; PHP issues had me uninstalling and reinstalling PHP and the Apache web server to get my website working again, so instead of going to bed at midnight like I would have if I didn’t try upgrading, I ended up going to bed around 2 AM. Less than six hours of sleep, hooray! ((Not hooray.)) At least I was able to put together some views for my quantitative self database to collect my exercise data in one place, and also to create an agenda for my strength exercises.

Work today was uneventful but busy. I’ve got my hands in a few different projects so there’s always something to do, which is nice.

After work today I went to a happy hour that my gym was throwing at a restaurant in the same neighborhood as my office and gym. I didn’t feel so awkward there, but having alcohol and a task (fill out this card with the names of three new people and something interesting you’ve learned about each) probably helped. I’d like to work on my self confidence when booze and party games aren’t involved. Unfortunately no-one there caught my eye (well, not enough attraction or interaction for me to feel like asking for her number) ((Excuses, excuses.)), though one girl that I chatted with the most there gave me one of the flyers for gym membership “in case you’re interested in joining.” “But I’m already a member!” Not sure if she was flirting with me there or not but she’s also apparently allergic to cats, so OH WELL.

Speaking of, I listened to that episode of the Invisibilia podcast that my psychologist recommended, the episode on fear, and it was really interesting. The guy who was interviewed had created a “rejection therapy” where every day he had to do something to be rejected by someone to get used to that feeling. That may be something to keep in mind. I also found a book on dating that was written by some woman doctor (so that’s pretty strong evidence that it’s not going to be like the douchey pickup-artist books) called Changing Your Game: A Man’s Guide to Success With Women. I’ll probably read through some of that this weekend.

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Mental exercises

So I worked from home today as I expected; most of my work ended up being finding data sets and finding ways to create maps with those data sets. Unfortunately it seems that Google is deprecating Google Maps Engine so I’ll have to find a replacement that we can use at work for creating ad-hoc maps.

I worked a little on breathing exercises the other day; my psychologist recommended I try a breathing exercise app. I found I had already downloaded one ((There was an article in the Washington Post recently about a mood-tracking app made by the Department of Defense for soldiers with PTSD, and this breathing exercise app was mentioned in the article and programmed by the same group.)) so I gave it a try. I wasn’t stressed when I tried the app, and felt about the same afterwards, but my psychologist said that it was good to practice just to get used to how to breathe this way.

I mentioned to her how at first I was thinking that I wouldn’t have anything to talk about and how I felt down while creating my post last night, so we spent today talking about ways I react to social anxiety. It’s funny, I wouldn’t have thought that I have social anxiety (the term makes me think of someone who can’t cope with/around crowds), but hearing it used in the context of me having trouble engaging in conversation or meeting people or putting myself into those types of situations makes sense. I always felt like I was imposing on people when I’d try to cold start a conversation with them in public. I’d often hear about women being catcalled or harassed I absolutely didn’t want to come across that way when asking someone out. When I’d start some conversation, I’d invariably end up walking through the entire conversation in my head beforehand. Once the interaction was over, I’d also end up replaying it in my head and overanalyzing what I said and their reactions.

We talked about how that fear of rejection, that fear of anxiety, how those worries hold me back, so one way to combat that is to experience it multiple times so that fear doesn’t hold as much sway over me. I mentioned how sometimes I need to conquer those types of experiences in a big way (like the first time I did karaoke at Music Midtown, for example – after that first time doing karaoke in any other situation was a piece of cake), so I need to find ways of doing something similar with my current situation.

She also actually suggested looking into pick-up artist material; we both agreed that a lot of it is actually pretty awful, but the part that I ought to look into is how to build yourself up and work up your confidence. Also, since I hate trying to sustain small-talk, she suggested I look into different Meetup groups to maybe find one where there might be other people in similar circumstances because having a group of such people together could help; I wouldn’t be faced with a diverse group of people with varying levels of confidence where I typically end up standing by myself trying to build up my confidence to join in. There’s also an episode of the podcast Invisibilia she recommended I listen to as well.

I made some chili this afternoon and put it in the slow cooker about an hour before I headed out to go to my appointment. The nice thing about planning this meal out ahead of time was that when I returned from walking home in the cold there was a warm chili-smell waiting to greet me when I walked in the door. Speaking of, I think it’s about time for dinner.

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Looking for discussion topics in all the wrong places

Haven’t done much exciting the last few days. I stayed in at home on Saturday just to do laundry and chores, and though I thought about going to Mom and Dad’s on Sunday (Dad’s going to take Kelly’s stuff to Tennessee on February 1, so I need to copy her DVDs for the family by then), I hung out with Dave and Dan and Kat instead.

I bought a new wireless router while Dave and I were waiting for Dan and Kat to get home. It wasn’t that long ago that I bought my Airport Extreme base station, and I’m not even sure that it’s 100% at fault, but I had recently started having issues with different devices dropping connections to my network. It wasn’t even like they were dropping connections frequently, but when they did it was pretty irritating to try to get them to reconnect. At first I figured I could just live with it but my decision to “just live with it” didn’t last very long. $200 later I’ve got a new wireless router and this one has a physical wifi on/off button on top. It only took Bertie 17 1/2 hours to sit on it and turn my wifi network off.

Today I worked from home. Even though it didn’t snow as much as I was expecting it to and though I could have gone into the office, there’s more snow coming tonight and rather than trek to the office and back with my work laptop both ways I just stayed home to work instead. At least I was able to get a lot done.

Even though I’ll be working from home tomorrow (likely, unless the government makes some crazy decision to open and not give people the choice to telework) I’ll still have to venture out tomorrow afternoon for my second therapist appointment. Second appointment in two weeks, and second time in two weeks that it’s snowed. This time though I’ll take Metro rather than trying to find parking after last week’s discovery that all the blocks in that area have rush-hour parking restrictions starting at 4 PM, and me with my appointment at 5.

I was thinking today that I wasn’t even sure what I was going to talk about in my session tomorrow; it wasn’t like I had a rough week or that I’ve been feeling especially depressed or anything, but then I suddenly felt sad and lonely. I just feel cold and wish I had someone here with me and wish I could find it easy to get back into dating again but I also feel like it’s become a pointless exercise to try to meet someone for dinner or drinks just to maybe see each other one or two or zero more times and then I’m back at square one all over again. I feel terrible about it also because I feel like there are so many more important issues in the world I ought to be concerned about and yet I keep coming back to this feeling like I won’t find another relationship. I’m almost worried that I don’t know how to sustain a relationship anymore since the ones I’ve tried to start in the past four years haven’t gone anywhere. I just hate that I feel so frustrated about this, but I don’t know how else to feel, and I don’t know what else I could do to change things except for what I’ve tried to do and what I’m currently doing. It’s just so… so… disappointing I guess is the best way to put it. I’m sad and I’m frustrated and regret that I feel this way and I know it’s probably unreasonable but it’s the worst.

At least I got my taxes done today. Turns out I’ll be getting back $110 federal and $405 from DC, so yay for free money.