The Little Book of Little Victories, and how I learned to do confrontation

Well hello there! It's been a while. Fundraising is currently taking a small hiatus while I figure out when to do my next event. In the meantime, life has delivered a good deal of excitement to my door.

The Little Book of Little Victories

When I first started my medication I decided to keep a 'victory' diary, which I affectionately call the Little Book of Little Victories, and still add entries to every so often. Depression, as I have explained, makes everything harder, from cooking dinner to socialising. So in order to get through, it helps to focus on the small things that have a positive impact; those things that mean, if only for a few moments, that you've beaten it.

In the beginning, the victories were simply things like, "Cleaned the kitchen and tidied my bedroom" and "Haven't cried today." Underneath these, I wrote how those actions make me feel. In mid September I recorded the first time that I had felt normal (for a given value of normal) in months. As the weeks and months have progressed, my little victories are growing, and recently I have been able to add two very significant ones to the list.

Last month I somehow managed to negotiate my way through a hefty interview process and find myself with a new job. Although my stress levels sky rocketed during this time, and I shed more than a few tears, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself for making such a step in such a short time. Once again I have to attribute some of this to the support of family and colleagues, but the fact that it's something I could never have done six months ago makes it all the more rewarding.

I've now been in my new role for almost a month, and have coped with the transition better than I imagined. For the record, I had imagined more than one meltdown by now. There have been none.

How I learned to do confrontation

I write this with some hesitancy, because I don't wish to claim that I have, by any means, nailed this particular issue of mine, but today, I had a conversation that required me to be somewhat confrontational, and I managed it without panicking, getting flustered, or feeling guilty.

Allow me to offer some background. Put simply, I hate confrontation of any kind. Historically I have found it sort of embarrassing and experienced feelings of guilt soon after expressing any sort of displeasure. At anything. I have talked, at some length, with my therapist about this, and when I happened to mention again that I don't like confrontation the other week in my session, she replied with a sly grin, "Don't you?!". You know you're getting better when your therapist starts getting sarky.

So the most recent victory for me was having that conversation, where I articulated my frustrations clearly, assertively and without embarrassment, and instead of feeling bad (which my brain tried a couple of times to make me do, resulting in an internal Smeagol/Gollum type scenario in which Smeagol ultimately won, getting Gollum to eff off) - I actually felt pretty good. Not, I'd like to point out, because I'm a heinous bitch who enjoys having a go, but because I had the courage to stand up and fight my corner. And that is a pretty big little victory.

Pics courtesy of http://imgarcade.com/ and http://www.quickmeme.com/

The Great Wine Tasting

Last Saturday was the evening of the Great Wine Tasting, during which I schooled my parents and a handful of their excellent friends in tasting wine like a boss, and somewhat surprised myself at the amount of information I was able to fish out of the dark recesses of my memory.

The evening was a great success - we explored the differences between old world & new world Sauvignons, Chardonnays from different climates and Pinot Noir vs Malbec. We sniffed, we tasted, we food matched (and if anyone can give me the Latin for that I will buy them a drink). We ate grapes and chewed stalks (one or two over enthusiastic tasters also swallowed said stalks) and finished with a blind tasting, by which time everyone present was a pro at tasting and managed to identify at least a couple of flavours in the wine.

Although spittoons were offered, they were roundly rejected and I'm told there was more than one aching head the following morning. Parents, eh?

At this point, I would like to say a very large, very warm and very fuzzy THANK YOU to Carrie & Keith Devonshire, who couldn't make the wine tasting in the end, but kindly donated £150 to the cause. This donation alone is enough to fund a local support group, enabling people with mental health difficulties to get their confidence and self esteem back. And believe you me, that's money very well spent.

In prep for high altitude

The very same day of the tasting, I obtained a training mask that simulates high altitude. This, when twinned with the aforementioned waterproof trousers, makes me so irresistible to the opposite sex that I've been banned by the authorities from wearing the two together. Behold:

My experience so far, aside from confirmation that it's really hard to breathe at high altitude, is that Darth Vader must've had it pretty rough, always having the noise of his own respiration in his ears. Seriously. I'm at the sitting-still-and-practising-breathing stage and I keep wondering why there's a Sith lord in everything I'm watching on TV.

Step two of my training has begun, with a program that requires me to make a concerted effort to be physically active on a more regular basis. The effort is largely home based, but I am also being good and parking a 10 minute walk away from my new office to build in a little daily walking. I'm hoping that at some point this year the weather might decide to, I don't know, warm up a little, and perhaps treat us to some sunshine and an absence of 70mph winds so that I can do a 1-2 hour ramble along the coast.

Donation total

Thanks to some ace baking by my mother and her buddy Mrs Ashley, I got a further £50 hit into the Just Giving account this week. Poppa C also managed to get some extra weight added to my Mind collection tin through selling cake and persuading people to give up their hard earned cash for a good cause. To my relief, I have not received any complaints about his methods of persuasion, which I'm assuming were above board.

So once again a big ol' happy thank you to those who have helped me reach an amazing £664 (+ what's in the tin). I'm genuinely bowled over by the support I'm receiving.