Many things [depression and jobs and family and just fuck it]

I talked to mom again. It went well. Somehow I don't remember most of what we talked about because typical. Anyways I sent an email to start talking with the man in charge of the ecolodge to negotiate what I would do for how long.

 

Applying to the IPC is looking more and more attractive now. There has been no response from the Rurre dude, so perhaps it won't pan out? Won't that make us all feel a bit foolish for the excitement. But currently I'm working on getting recommendation letters, just got one, might get another, and then I have to email my once major advisor to ask if she ever got an email the last time I asked for one, so that I can see if she already has one and can recycle since most places I have seen asking for recs ask for three. And hopefully I can get a job??!?

I talked with brother, and we have a set of actions set down to do. 1) Start reviewing/studying materials I need to know (statistics) in preparation for studying for the GREs 2) Contact a bio friend and have some friendly chatter and then ask her for some advice 3) I forgot.

I forgot aaah. This is really frustrating.

 

So I've been going to this workshop thing called Ingenia, and its been a trip and a half. Half the time I am sitting there going "this is a massive scam and incredibly well designed marketing using social pressure and creating its own language that by definition makes a fail state anything outside of its projected goals and ways of going around to them" and half going "holy crap it works for a lot of people I keep seeing all these people fired up and changing their life".

It doesn't work that way for me. It's been super hard to get myself to do anything, I'm constantly analyzing the training, the language, the way they do things, the way they manipulate us emotionally. I did have some emotional catharsis in some parts of it, but in others I couldn't help but feel that we're being put through difficult emotional situations so we all bond and become a unit that pressures each member to sign up for the next installment that costs like woah.

But the thing is, it has changed a lot of people. It is very successful from what I can see! So there is something it is doing right about how to take control of one's life, that one is a blank page everyday, that one is a "titan of the impossible" and can do what they set their mind to and give their 100%. It just doesn't seem to be working for me? But I promised myself and my parents I would try, and mostly to prove myself that I tried so I never spend my time going "what if".

I am nervous though, because the next installment is going to feature recruitment and I know I don't want to. I just don't want to. I'm not convinced at all with this, so how have I gotten so far in this? Because my parents are paying it is why. So I feel guilty that I'm using their hard earned money for something that is probably not working. My parents have assured me, each, that it doesn't matter, that money is meant to be spent or else what would be the point, that the possibility of improvement for me is what matters, and that if it doesn't work out, it doesn't. So I am thinking of who I want to recruit, and while they really emphasize how things get so much better in your life when you recruit your loved ones so you are all speaking the same language and are united in "living extraordinary lives" I just don't want to recruit my parents, or anyone really. I am not able to go "this is helping me", so why would I be able to go "this is something the people I know deserve because they deserve a Good Life".

Frankly, that just made it sound more like a scam type thing. Still, I'm off now. I want to do things and this did remind me what those are, and those involve reaching out to loved ones so I need to organize seeing theater with a friend tomorrow, and the day afte rit is a pool party at his place, and that night I have DnD, and the day after I have a fund raising lunch to help someone from the workshop raise the funds to continue with the training.

Wow that is tiring me out just writing, but I do want to do more things with people.

One good thing: this training thing made me face to myself that I really, really want to visit someone close to me, so we're working on a date and time for me to visit.

I am not feeling good, to be honest. I should perhaps accept that I am stressed and then move on.

 

Also I finally saw a job opening for something I love, the deadline's in april, and of course I am a morass of "Desperately want"/"why try I am not going to get it"/"oh god if I try I will FAIL and these nice intelligent people will know what a terrible person I am". I am working on what my therapist talks about, about accepting anxiety, instead of fighting it, as paradoxically that generally leads to anxiety reducing.

There is too much to do and also too little to do. I don't understand how that works XD

 

Wow it's been a while since I posted this. Tbh, the whole... situation that went down between people and my moirail getting hurt made me not want to post here, but I kind of want to come back, see if this can work anyways. I dunno. I just dunno.

So, update: the workshop Ingenia thing was just... I quit. I simply quit. I couldn't do it. I couldn't recruit people into something I didn't believe in. Sometimes I feel super guilty and like obviously I don't want things enough because I quit, but I am often able to go "it wasn't a way that was working for me, and forcing myself to do something that was just creating more doubt about myself is not a good way forwards".

I cried about this at some point, but my therapist thought that I did fine. So there is that. It really did read to me as a massive emotional manipulation, and like. I can swear that there were sect like things? It was ridiculous. Ok I'm glad I got out. I should remember that.

I got an interview! It went well! I didn't get the job. Months later, and I feel... let down. I sometimes get angry and go "that was my job! That was my key to the future!" and feeling like someone stole it from me, which is ridiculous. But it was so perfect. It was the right type of job to network, get me up to date, get experience, jump back into my field, and be enough for me to be able to study for gradschool apps feeling I have a chance.

Instead, I'm still stucki n the "what place will want me without appropriate experience, oh god, I suck, I have done nothing for myself in the three years after I graduated". I got a small job the other month? Which was good for a bit. But my anxiety about it is crashing again. I have to remember that I've worked hard and gotten better in depression adn self hate and motivation in these three years. They weren't wasted.

I still don't have anything to show for it though. How am I going to become a badass bio liberal arts professor who does cool amazon research?

At least I can think of the future again.

I'm doing well. My therapist has put me down to meeting once every two weeks instead of meeting every week. So I AM doing better.

I just wish I had gotten the job. It would have been six hard badass months. But they'd have been worth it. I'm treating it as like, something that would singlehandedly fix my life, which isn't true, but it would have been so fucking great.

Sigh. If I got this far I can do it again in the future. There just... need to be more positions open. So I gotta look for them, unlike the past few months where I stopped because it felt like "what is the point".

I still often want to just lie in bed and do nothing, but I am... sitll better than I was. It's still progress.

So hi. Did anyone miss me? Pfft.

 

Ok the more I think about it the more the self improvement workshop looks like a cult type thing.

 

I have a thing I should be doing.

So I got a job thing, I mentioned, it was for a month. And I turned in document at the end that was the finished product, and got feedback. Then recently I got an email with the boss asking me if I had any questions about the feedback, but I panicked about the feedback because I saw I made a silly mistake and then just didn't want to deal with it because oh no I fucked a thing that meant the whole thing was WRONG and TERRIBLE. I know logically this isn't right, but I'm still working on it.

So I'm fixing things up on the document based on the feedback and sending the edited version back and going ... I don't know. I guess I'll go "here I did some edits. Thank you for the feedback, I see I made a few silly mistakes, but I have no questions because your feedback was very clear".

Only I keep procrastinating because I hate reading this feedback, and thinking about jobs just makes me gloomy becuase I didn't Get The Job That Was Right and I can't Find Anything In My Field and I am so sick of doing the social sciences thing, Iwant to go back into bio research, I want to study the Amazon, but I have no bright ideas on what I want to study. If I will one day do research, I need to have questions! I need to come up with questions to research! I'm currently instead just looking at things ?????? and just, not having ideas. So it feels like I will never reach my dream and career and like I should just give up and that I'll be a terrible mooch off my parents forever who ruined herself and all her potential and her good college.

 

I feel much better than I did yesterday.

 

Spoiler: not sure if wanted/useful, will delete if requested

I totally feel you wrt a lot of the grad school stuff. Maybe my experiences might help you feel a bit better about it?

About research ideas, part of grad school is developing them. Very few people enter in knowing exactly what and how they want to research, and you'd be working with someone who'd help you to direct your thinking and come up with research ideas and implementing them. No one is expected to do all of it alone, and part of the whole grad school experience is learning how to be a researcher and preparing you for the future.

I also find it helpful to read papers that are in my area of interest and then letting those kind of influence what I'm thinking about? Like, maybe I read a paper but still have some questions about some aspect, and then I start thinking about ways of trying to answer those questions or building off of the previous research. I think it can be really helpful to kind of find where your interests lie and what's been done regarding them, so you can kind of fit yourself in there and start developing a question. (And of course, you aren't absolutely beholden to the initial idea or to continuing a particular line of research just because it's what you did in grad school, which kind of trips me up sometimes, being like "I'm going to be researching this forever???")

If ya ever wanna talk science or grad school or anything, lemme know! And I'll totally delete this if it's not wanted.

 

@Saro
Thank you for your response, it was wanted/useful. I've been sitting on it for a while because I couldn't quite make myself write a response.

I feel a bit better knowing that people don't go into grad school knowing exactly what they want, but I think I do need to have a basic idea? Probably? It's hard for me because I don't know what I want to do, which would make picking a grad school program hard in the first place. Like I know I want to do ecology in the Amazon, but the more... practical thoughts about that fall flat. What would I be doing? Looking at plants? I have more experience in plant communities than animals. I start contemplating the subject and I start entering a bit of a panic as the more I realize how much I don't know what I am going to do.

I think reading papers is a good idea. I should definitely do some google scholar search for recent stuff on ecology in the Amazon and hopefully just, get a better idea of what people are doing. I've seen it already before, but again, more in the social sciences, which I really just don't want to do.

Could you, I dunno, tell me some of your experience? Like, deciding what you wanted to do/finding programs, what type of stuff you considered to try and make yourself more attractive to grad schools? I'm thinking of learning Python in case it helps, though I kind of feel that I should be studying for the GREs instead...

 

Ok so I sent of an application for a research position at an arboretum, and it was pretty strong I think. In the meantime I found another position to apply for, but I'm going to have to crash course statistics because I've gotten super weak in that area and I don't recall enough to make an argument that I can do it beyond going "anova... tests?? Significant statistical difference??? Confidence intervals?!!" in my cover letter. I've done it before, and used the software R too, so I think I can do it if I study, so I'm going to spend a few days refreshing my self before writing that cover letter. The due date for the application is in September, so I have some time.

I also finished the boring online climate change course I was taking. This one focused more on the humanities side (It was a UN course, there was only one section of 6 on the science of climate change, here's hoping I retain enough from "financing of climate change" and "planning for climate change" for it to have been useful to take). So, there's that, I can do stuff when I focus.

I'm wondering if my inability to mke myself focus is ADHD, but it's probably just exdys flaring up.

Overall, I'm alright.

 

SO. POSSIBLE VENUE OF POSSIBLE WORK OPENING UP?????

Ok I'm exaggerating. So I sometimes work on translations for the subdirector of the NGO mom works at. She's agreed to pass my resume around to some potential contacts. One emailed back expressing some interest though they don't currently have a position.

SO NOW I'M IN BOTH EXCITED MODE AND PANIC MODE. Also in "nitpicking" mode, because I looked the lady who expressed interest and while she's in conservation, she's more of a social researcher, so field work for her is a bit different, I think?

It might pan out that I work on a volunteer basis but even that is good for padding my resume so that's good too. If something pans out. Which would require me moving to a different city and out of my parent's home. So using up the money I've saved. Which means no going on a trip to see my boyfriend in a long time, which is what I was expecting and

Yeah I'm starting to negative thought circle again, see that? I'm criticizing every thing going on.

Ok, keep it cool self. It's just potential interest. Let's focus on answering her questions first and then we can worry about the rest, and keep working on those other job apps anyways.

Ok. So a thing happened. Yeah!

 

Just told the other boyfriend that "I'm like, waiting like any moment someone is going to walk in and quiz me on stuff to see if I'm worthy of this potential opportunity" and realized that yes, it is true, it's like anything at all opens up my well of "I gotta be worth it somehow, soon people will see I'm not worth it, why am I fooling people/I gotta fool the person"

 

You can do it hun!! <><><>

 

Today I went back to therapy after a two month break (we were meant to only change it to a once a month thing, rather than stop for two months).

I still have a lot of problems with fear paralyzing me to do stuff, with my catastrophic thinking of "I will fail, therefore I won't try". I also have a really hard time believing I am good at things and that I have skills! It's like, it feels like everything I accomplished before was done by a different person and that I can never repeat what I did. Which doesn't make sense. Like mom said, it's not like depression killed my brain cells so I'm no longer intelligent.

I've been both good and bad at working on more cover letters and applications. Good in that when I get to it, I'm much faster than I used to be. Bad in that, I still procrastinate. I'm procrastinating right now. I don't know what to write. I don't believe I'll get hired for this position, I haven't even gotten an interview for any of the positions I've applied to in six months.

 

Also, my therapist basically deconstructed intelligence and ability so that I couldn't deny that I hadn't achieved stuff. She was pretty good at ruthlessly going "yep you've done things". Poor mom tries and just gets me going "no I'm no good" and then doesn't know how to proceed.

I might have also erred and bought myself snacks that I shouldn't have, but I am somehow not feeling too guilty about it. I want to say I deserved every bit of it but I think crying during therapy only gave me license to one item, not like uh, three small bags of crisps, and a sprite, and a ramen pack (Why do I even like ramen)

 

It's becoming clearer and clearer that I'm going to have to break up with the second boyfriend. Not because he did anything wrong, at all, but because... I'm just not into it. I'm just not as excited as he is about the relationship, and I don't get the urge to talk to him about stuff - heck I often don't know what to talk to him about. It all contrasts so big with the first boyfriend, who I can talk to about the stupidest things and that I'm constantly thinking of what to talk to him about, and how silence between us two doesn't feel awkward but my silence around second boyfriend does...

The basic fact is, first boyfriend was my friend for years and years, and a good one at that, before we started dating. I trust him immensely. I love him. I have actually told him I love him, several times, often. There is a rapport there that is hard to match.

But my relationship with second boyfriend is way more superficial, and tenuous, and I don't know how to make it stronger, nor do I actually have a strong interest in doing so. It's just not there.

Of course then I just feel shitty because what if I'm not giving him a fair chance, and he is going to be really affected by a break up, and he has insecurity problems I'll be feeding into, and I'm being a spoiled brat anyways because I'm lucky enough to have two whole boyfriends why would I be so ungrateful to want to break up with him, and...

and the whole mental shpiel thing just tires me and now I want it to be over. So I am going to have to think about breaking up, how to do it, what to say, and just. Gah. I should never have started this second relationship. It's going to mess with our DnD group and I don't want the collateral stress it will put on that friend group. It's been six months which is both long and not long at all.

So I guess I just, I know what needs to be done, and need to get around to doing it.

 

I don't wanna deal with this now when he's all cutesy I get all stressed aaaaaaah

 

Ok I did it. I broke up with him.

I feel... relieved. There was no blow out, which was to be expected but still worried me, and he's managing as well as can be expected. He said he'd gotten a feeling the past month.

So that's done. Go me. I did a difficult thing.

I wanna just hide in music and first... only boyfriend now.

 

So today I had a kind of semi interview by which I mean I talked to someone I might work with on a volunteer capacity so I can pad my resume with interesting things while I keep job searching for something.

This job search is going forever. Will I ever get a job and experience?

Will I ever get around to grad school?

How the fuck am I going to have a career and support myself and have a life?