Chupacabra Bugs

I can hear cicadas.

They're everywhere, a sound that is both constant and ever changing. The sound is always there, but the tone, direction, and volume all change moment to moment.

It's a bit like life, when you think on it.

I'm sitting outside a condo in Sedona, AZ, at night. I've finished my first official day without Lamictal.

The song is, really, no different than when it started this morning. I'm really no different, and I really couldn't tell the difference if I didn't know. It's just one day; I go one day without my medication all the time.

This, however, is me off of it entirely, for better or for worse. I wasn't particularly happy with how it made me feel in terms of my creativity and how I approached life. Some say there's an energy in Sedona that can't be found anywhere else. I can't speak to that; I stood atop one of Sedona's famed "vortices" yesterday and felt nothing except for the heat and the breeze.

I'm not one to come in search of a spiritual revelation - I came here because it's beautiful. Without much light pollution or clouds, the stars actually twinkle here, in a way I don't always see at home. During the day, I'm surrounded by cliffs of a startling red hue. There's enough in that for me.

I'm going to get ready to get some sleep as we're getting up early to go to the Grand Canyon, but I think there's lots I'd like to say.

For now, it's me, my husband, a nice cold hard cider, and the cicada choir.

Fun fact: before we figured out that they were cicadas, my husband called them "Chupacabra Bugs".

The Mental Taco

Of random note: in my first post I noted the voices in my head complaining about the lack of beef tacos. My husband and I made beef tacos for dinner on Friday night. Tacos, hard cider, and a movie, it was a relaxing and fun night.

I will admit that I gloated to that guy in my head that is always ranting on about tacos.

I have no apologies. He was asking for it for gloating every time he eats a taco. I was thinking of making a drinking game out of it.

Meet the new boss, who is an old boss

My manager dropped the news casually, as he might comment on weather:

“You’ll be getting a new manager.”

It wasn’t what I expected to hear this week, nor something I wanted to hear. I won't bother making my opinion pretty: that sucks.

Change is can be terrifying to me. Being bipolar, I do best if I can set a stable environment on an even keel. I crave excitement, I crave things happening, input, and that's the ADHD. There's a fine line to walk, finding a stability and routine that leaves room for things to get shaken up enough that I don't get bored. It's taken years to get that routine down, to have that comfortable space where my manager trusts and respects me, and I know how to deliver my best work because we've got the right framework in place. I like knowing that my boss give me all the tools to do my job, then let me work out the how, since I need the ability to just shut the door, ignore everything and everyone, and work. I need that. I've flourished in part to having found that sweet spot, that delicate balance. With my life often a chaotic whirlwind, work was that place that was "quiet" in comparison. I knew what to expect, even when life became a matter of expected the unexpected, put out a fire. I've done this job over 14 years, so it's not as if I need a specific manager to have that balance. However, I have been strongly enabled to do my best work here and I didn't want my situation to change.

After he spoke I froze for a moment, a rabbit in headlights. I don’t recall what I said, but I scribbled “new boss :(" in my notebook. It certainly wasn't necessary to note it down but the significance was automatic and my hand conveyed it.

Honesty fell from my lips before I could stop it. I told him how much I appreciated having him as a manager, and how much he'd helped me.

I have many reasons for why I thought he was a fantastic manager. When this man got handed me back in 2010, he didn't know what he was getting. He was given a my name, some background, probably some comments from my manager at the time, and the worst review of my career. I dreaded walking into his office to meet with him for the first time, not knowing what to expect. At first he scared me a little because I couldn't read him at all.

He didn't mince words, but essentially said that what we'd need to do is get my work up to a point where we could prove what I was capable of. It wasn't doubt. It wasn't a lecture.

Next steps. That's all.

At the time, I didn't deserve that much consideration in my own eyes. The horrible review had not been entirely of my making, but the "why" didn't matter so much as the fact that my poor performance was documented. All the focus was on how I could prove that I wasn't what was written in that review.

Many things happened in the time that followed. I realized that I needed help, and I went out to get it. I deliberated what to say to my boss. I had my diagnosis in hand: bipolar type 2, ADHD, mild PTSD. I didn't know if I wanted to say anything, but alternately, there was a lot of scrutiny from all sides to see if I'd make it. I knew it was there. I also knew that having to go to appointments or have crap days because of medication adjustments could come around and bite me later. I asked a friend of mine for advice; he was a manager on my team, and worked with my boss frequently. He said simply, "Absolutely."

I told him. There really wasn't much to say on his end; what do you do with that dropped on you? I felt better telling him, not only because I would have to deal with what I already outlined, but he'd see some changes I got bigger and better projects, projects that gave me a chance to stretch, to grow, but that didn't set me up for failure. I got to take on and learn things I didn't know I was capable of. When I got a promotion in October, I wanted to just run down the hall telling everyone. I made it.

You'll be getting a new manager.

I went back to my office feeling like I'd swallowed marbles. I didn't want change, I was comfortable, and my team shared the sentiment.

What happens now? Who will I report to? Will they "get" me? How much do I tell them? Would I have to act "normal" until this new unknown manager got to know me? Could they keep up with the crazy stuff I sometimes say, or get that sometimes I just can't keep it all bottled up? Would he/she be someone I could occasionally bust out the f-word in front of?

The marbles started jostling around. The work I was doing was going to another group, leaving me adrift from both a manager and the work that had been my life for over a year and a half. While they said our team would likely stay together I don't believe that's likely. We work together almost on instinct now, we know how to support each other and prop each other up. We can write up a list of tasks and know who is most suited for every part with very little thought.

Of the two best managers I've had at this company, one is the manager I'm losing, and the other was my manager back in 2000. He was my mentor and later friend. He saw potential in a girl with no degree or resume to speak of, but raw smarts, determination, energy, and a passion for the right things. The things you can't train.

In an interesting twist, he's a peer to my manager, so I have also worked with him the last year and a half, as well as on and off for the last few years on other projects. I would have loved to be on his team, but our past friendship meant we knew things about each other and I wasn't sure how he felt about that. The stories I could tell, that won't get told unless my toenails are getting yanked off. We haven't been "friends" in years just due to how life plays out sometimes but we still get along great.

On Friday I worked from home. For lunch, my husband and I walked out to get a bite to eat. As I sat down at a table, I looked at my email and found an email from that manager, asking if I could come talk to him if I was around. I had a hunch what this was leading to, as very rarely did I get messages with that much ambiguity. Since I wasn't in the office, he called me later that afternoon. He dropped it on me as easily as my other manager delivered his news. "How would you like to be on my team?"

I didn't quite squeal. Contrary to rumor, I do have some self-control.

I get to work on something I'm passionate about, too. It's the ideal outcome given the situation.

The marbles are out of my stomach and put in a bag before I lose any more of them than I already have.

Cranberry

I can already tell that attempting to do this daily won't work. I spent over an hour on the phone working on nonprofit related things, which ate into my time but was good because I really love the people I work with there.

Today I'm taking something of a low hanging fruit topic. I haven't talked much about my food allergies, even though they play a significant role in my life. I got the results of my blood test back in January of 2013, and started cutting food out in February.

I don't really exercise much. I walk a bit, but that's about it. I don't count calories. I went from 176lbs to 143lbs.

First off, it's worth noting that there are different kinds of food allergies. I have what's known as IgG allergies, which means I have an immune system reaction, but do not have a full out reaction that puts me in danger.

Reports vary on the effectiveness of the testing; it's possible to test positive for something, but it won't have an effect on you. What was recommended to me by my doctor was to cut everything out for a few weeks, then try adding stuff back in. I've mostly just left stuff out, because it wasn't hard for me to adjust.

It's worked out really well for me. I'll probably talk more about it later, but for now, I thought I'd just throw out there what the test came up with.

Level 4: cranberry (… sad is me :( )
Level 3: Baker's yeast, brewer's yeast, casein, cheddar cheese, chicken eggs, crab, duck eggs mozzarella cheese, pecans, sesame seeds, sugar cane, yogurt
Level 2: Cottage cheese, milk, whey, coffee beans, amaranth, spelt, spelt, wheat, mushrooms

I mostly cut the 3-4 stuff out, but did go ahead and cut all cow dairy because they were so related. I cut wheat-type stuff for a while, but to tell you the truth, it's one of my lesser allergies in a pretty decent list. I started eating it again, I'm fine, and still losing weight.

But I seriously miss cranberry juice.

Terminally interesting

Going through all the stuff in our house is hard.

Throwing stuff away is easy. I love getting rid of anything I can, giving it away, selling it, throwing it out. I'm not big on keeping a lot of things. The killer is staying on task when there's a whole room full of Potentially Interesting Things. It can be torture on a bad day. While I was cleaning out one of our storage spaces (yes, we have THAT much stuff), I found myself distracted by pictures, old letters, or books. I read almost an entire book from when I was a kid while sitting in the storage space last time. It only took me a half hour because I skimmed it, I only wanted the reminder of what the book was about. That half hour could have been used to get something done, the book brought home to look at later when I wasn't sitting in the storage unit.

The storage unit has been particularly challenging, as the one I've been dealing with has a lot of my possessions from when I was younger. There's nostalgia, stories, moments frozen in time. Horrid letters from my ex talking about things that I don't think I'll ever repeat (how did I ever think that relationship was going to last?). Or maybe a toy that I really liked as a kid. Maybe it's a toy I want to keep. Maybe donate. Maybe it's just broken and it needs to go.

A constant stream of keeping focused, sorting, taking an item, evaluating, moving on. It's pretty hellish when everything is so damned interesting.

The giant internal middle finger

I went to the second appointment with my new psychiatrist (ARNP) today.
 
I can't stress enough the value of being under good care when struggling with mental disorders. My previous psychiatrist wasn't bad, but I had a series of challenges where he was concerned. It took months before I could get treatment for ADHD, as he had decided within fifteen minutes of talking to me that my issue was that I was bipolar type II, and there was no more discussion. He shot me down for months, to the point that I was in tears after getting in my car because I just felt he wasn't listening.
 
June 2010. I was on the verge of finding a new doctor when I finally had to tell him, "My job performance is not satisfactory. I could lose my job." I didn't know it then, but those words apparently cause a doctor to listen. At the time, it wasn't my intention. I simply wanted to be honest and I was at the end of my rope. Months on Lamictal and I hadn't gained enough attention span to learn what I needed to in order to keep up with the rest of the team and meet my deliverables.
 
He started me on Adderall right away. Within a day, in an odd twist, I contracted viral pneumonia. I ended up with a 104 degree temp, eventually in the ER, the whole nine yards. Two days later, I tried working from home. I took the Adderall in the morning, and I started writing code.
 
Anyone who worked with me years ago could have told you that I didn't code. I couldn't focus enough to buckle down and learn or build a plan. I had never got the hang of it, to the point that I'd had another manager on the team tell a room full of managers that I had "limited potential." That could have been crushing, to say nothing of how unprofessional it is, but I have a tendency to take that sort of thing and prove people wrong.
 
That first day of working after I started Adderall, I was also on DayQuil and Mucinex. I shouldn't have been working. I shouldn't have been upright. 
 
I wrote code for ten hours straight without breaking a sweat. I kept laughing because I didn't know I could do that. I had never written code for more than two hours straight.
 
My career has been trending upwards ever since. I was honest with my management and told them exactly what the diagnosis was, and more or less what to expect as I went through medication changes. As it would turn out, my boss's boss had ADD, and he described getting treatment like "putting glasses on for the first time." He told me:
 
"It's hard to see something in someone and know you can't say anything because it crosses a boundary that you shouldn't cross."
 
I asked him if he'd already figured it out, then. He confessed that yes, he had already spotted the signs in me, but as a manager it was not his business to broach the topic. 
 
From there, it was just adjusting medication as needed. I went in, I had my 15 minutes with my doctor, and he refilled my prescriptions. Not exactly a personal approach, but it got me by.
 
In October or November last year, I admitted to my doctor that I was feeling stressed out. I'm sure this is shocking. He decided to explain to me how to not be stressed, how to not worry about decisions, how to be happy.
 
He told me that I could do this by having faith in God. If I trusted in God, I would know that everything would be fine and wouldn't have to worry.
 
I thanked him and left, then promptly made an appointment with a new doctor that specializes in ADHD at the same office my husband goes to. I do not go to the doctor to be told what to believe. I need concrete solutions to problems, actions I can take to improve my own life. This is how I tick. I want to combine lifestyle, strategy, good habits, and medication, to build a solid foundation and live an awesome life on it.
 
My ARNP doesn't rush the appointment. She listens to what is going on and we discuss strategy. Today we discussed that it seems like I'm losing my steam focus-wise between 2-4pm, and that it makes it hard to do anything at home. Rather than just tell me to do what I'm doing and see what happens, she gave me a prescription for short-acting Adderall to take in the afternoon to push past the stuck point. I took a page of notes of thoughts and ideas from our discussions.

If you're struggling with depression, ADD/ADHD, bipolar, whatever, remember: it can get better. You just have to take those first steps, then keep pushing ever onward. Get what you need.
 
As for the manager that told a room full of people that I had "limited potential", I smile at him every day. A huge smile, almost as huge as the big mental middle finger I give him in my head.

Wanted: larger pizza to put sardines on

I've been having a hard time with distraction today. We have been trying to get the house in a state where I have a space to stretch out, to write, to get some quiet.

It's getting there, but not quite. There's simply too much stuff in the house, and the sort of housecleaning that needs to be done around here is torture, all the going through items of every variety and deciding what to toss or go. I love throwing things away, to tell you the truth. I am at a point in my life where clutter in my house just makes me feel like my mind is just as cluttered. It's hard to think straight when you're trying to not trip over your laundry.

My stepson has been crashing at our house and sleeps on the futon. His computer is in the office for now. Every other room is over packed and largely unusable. There's only two rooms that can be comfortably used to do anything: the main living area, and the office.

Tonight, the sound of gunshots on my husband's video game is too much to let me focus in the main living area, and my stepson is camped out in the office again. I know I could kick him out, but at the moment I'm just too tired to do it without being a dick. It would go something like this:

"Dude, seriously, do you pay the mortgage or for any utilities? Did you clean some house? Did you even put your dishes in the dishwasher? Please don't tell me that you were baked all weekend and are subsequently going to take two days to get your shit together again. Get out of my office and go find something else to do."

It boils down to me being too frustrated at everything at the moment to ask for the space. The unfortunate fact is that this place is a 2100 sq ft can packed with sardines. I frequently end up with nowhere to go, and I suspect this is a huge factor when it comes to writer's block.

My husband and I are working on it. He's hugely supportive and well aware of how bad the crowding is. We cleaned out a room for my stepson this weekend, and hopefully will get him entirely in there soon. Then the office becomes my domain again, which is going to do a world of good for me in general. I'll get to sit at a really comfortable desk, have nice big monitors, a good chair, ergonomic keyboard, plenty of room to put stuff, and I can get some decent light in the room during the day. It's a flower lei and a palm tree away from paradise as far as I'm concerned.

In the meantime, I'm holed in the disaster bedroom with one of the cats. There's this really weird pile of laundry in front of me, I covered it with a towel to keep the cats from laying on the actual clothes, but it looks like some kind of purple Pac-Man ghost that's been sitting on the couch and eating all of the potato chips. A bit of a dumpy Pac-Man ghost.

It'll get better, if for no other reason than sheer determination, and a refusal to solve the issue by nuking it from orbit.