cool stuff i wanna do at some point

     i'm not really a bucketlist kind of person. i don't even know if that's one word or two. there are places i wanna travel to and big things i wanna do, but actually compiling a list with the intention that i want to do them before i die will only bring out my crazy anxiety/hypochondriac tendencies and make me feel like i have to do them as soon as humanly possibly in case something horrible happens. ugh, now i'm bummed out.
     anyways, i have my first "paid time off" coming up and i'm taking a whole week off for vacation. i had to plan by vacation somewhat quickly because of the way the vacation policy is at my work. so i thought i had planned it enough far out that i could get one of my friends to take some time off too, maybe travel with me. but no such luck. it's hard because my closest girl friends are all married now. planning even a simple hang out with them can be hard. so a trip, near impossible. i'm not married, don't even have a boyfriend, so trying to plan a week off with actual fun stuff to do by myself has been really hard.
     people always say that i should just do stuff by myself, even if it's something that you would normally do with a significant other. in some cases, that is outright stupid. there are some activities that if you try to do them alone it's either pointless, boring, or just plain depressing. while there are plenty of things i don't mind doing by myself, and that includes going to the movies and having dinner at a restaurant, i still draw the line with some stuff. as i was looking through Groupon for activity ideas, i came up with a list of things that i need at least one other person to do with me in order to make it fun. so this is basically me letting my friends know that i want to do these things and we can do them for cheap! so lets schedule awesome times!!!!

things to do:

ride a gondola, obviously kinda romantic but could be fun with friends

jump around like an idiot at one of those Sky Zone places, even though it's mostly for kids

go kart racing, i will seriously kick all your asses at this

paintball, more of a group thing than just 2 people

ride in a hot air balloon, doesn't have to be romantic but you can't have a fear of heights

take a trip to Catalina Island and do whatever it is people do there, maybe ride a Vespa

visit the Queen Mary, possibly around Halloween since i know they do special stuff then

do one of those movie in the park events, it's basically a picnic which you cannot do alone cuz you creep everyone else out

i also wanna learn how to shoot a gun and go to a shooting range, just to try it out. i like action movies so it makes me curious if i would be good at it. maybe get some FBI style sunglasses and a stick-on mustache. come up with a fake name like Burt Macklin but for a girl. so i guess Berta Macklin. but that doesn't sound like a hot chic. i don't know, i'll figure it out by then.

i've been doing PaintNite already but i'm always up for more.

so come on, you guys! lets do this!

Fighting anxiety with joy

     As I mentioned in the previous blog, I've had a history of panic attacks since last Fall. When they first started, the thing that calmed me down the best was being hugged by somebody close to me. Even then it could easily take 30 minutes before I started feeling like myself again. I met a doctor who told me to pick an object to focus on and just breath deeply. That kinda helped but I still could have really bad attacks where I just couldn't stop these negative, worrisome thoughts that there was something physically wrong with me which was at the root of all my panic attacks. If I had any amount of heartburn or stomach pain it felt like I was having real heart problems. I kinda think that if I could had gotten a full cardiac work-up done, it may have allayed my fears and reduced the severity of my panic attacks. But I didn't know for sure what was going on with my body and the attacks just kept coming.

     Then one day I bought a dog. Actually, I texted my mom late at night with the phrase, "I need a dog now!" She found one for my by the next day. That's how I got Axl. 

He is the cutest little pomeranian. He was only 2 months old when I got him. He was so small and fluffy, I could just die. In general, having him in my life instantly made me calmer and happier. The first time I had a panic attack after I got him, it was really bad. It just kept coming back all night. I ended up in tears, hugging my roommate and she finally put me on the floor and made me do breathing exercises. After a couple minutes Axl came over and started licking my forehead. He made me laugh and my panic attack was dramatically reduced instantly. From then on, if I had a panic attack at home I would just go play with Axl and focus on how cute he was and how happy he made me feel. My panic attacks were getting shorter and shorter. 

     I found that even if he wasn't around when I had a panic attack, thinking about things that made me happy or laugh made my panic attacks stop. It started to become longer and longer between attacks. It had been over a month since I had had one when I was at the CIrque Du Soleil performance of O in Vegas and had such terrible heartburn that I started getting a panic attack right in the middle of the show. I took what I had learned from my experiences with my dog and just focused on the joy of the moment. The show was amazing and just focusing on it and how much I was enjoying it was enough to make it stop in less than a minute. And that's when I really started to realize the power of joy to overcome anxiety. 

     The other day I was looking on Pinterest and there was this picture:

And it made me realize how much I love the phrase "joie de vivre." It has such a wonderful meaning.

So when I was in yoga class and they asked us to focus on a mantra, I chose "joie de vivre." It put a smile on my face and made me feel warm and calm. 

     I have never been someone who makes goals for my life and five and ten year plans. I've never really known what I would say if I was asked those questions in an interview. At the most, right now my goals are to graduate from grad school and pass the boards so I can work as a physical therapist and do something I actually love doing. But I have no specific goals for which city to work in, or which place to work at, or what kind of promotions I want to get in the future. I would like to get married and have kids, but I don't think you can really call it a life goal. I don't know if it's how I see goals or how I see the world. But life just seems to fluid and mysterious. You can't plan every major life event. So if I did have to have a life goal outside of school, I think it would be to try and live every day with joie de vivre. With that as my goal, who knows what amazing things life may throw at me. And hopefully I will be making the most of every minute. 

Fight or Flight... or panic

     it's been awhile since i've been on this thing. school has been crazy. as in driving me crazy. but now that the semester is over i finally have the time to write about it. i often use this blog for a little catharsis. and if my catharsis can help anybody else out there, then great.
     to explain the semester fully i have to go back a little bit. as i have mentioned in previous blog entries, i am in a grad program for physical therapy and had decided to turn the 3 year program into 4 years with what is called the "flex program." it came about when i started having real problems with anxiety. when i went on the program i knew that in the 3 rd year you have a part-time semester where you are supposed to work in an internship 3 days a week and take classes 2 days a week. i really wanted to spread this semester out somehow because i knew it wasn't a good idea to try and do so many units (18) again. but at the time the head of the department told me there was no way to flex it and i just had to do it.
     i thought i might be able to do it. after a semester of anti-depressants that brought me back to myself with the help of therapy and a lighter schedule, i felt much better and was back on top of my school work. the following fall semester i ended up not having any classes because of the way they set up the flex program. it's very hard to explain on here. because of this and the fact that the following semester i would only be completing "incomplete" classes, i lost financial aid and my school health insurance. this led to me not being able to see my regular therapist and psychiatrist who gives me my anti-depressants. during the semester off i was feeling great (since i wasn't in class) and decided to just go off of the meds.
     the following spring i was still off of the meds as i completed my "incompletes'' and did just fine. I stayed off them during the summer when i took my summer full-time internship and did great. i felt like maybe i didn't need to take the meds again. i even had half the summer off before this fall part-time semester and was able to be really active and lose weight. i was nervous about the upcoming semester but figured that since it took a year and a half of taking 18 units to make me super anxious the first time, that i could probably make it through the semester.
     the part-time internship was at a setting i didn't want to be in again at a place that was the last place i should be. we only had 45 minutes for initial evals and 30 minutes for treatments and they kept stressing how important it is for me to be efficient and that not everybody passes the internships there. just what i needed, additional stress on top of a naturally busy semester. the courses added up to about 12 units by themselves, which is my natural limit that i have discovered over the years. this would be hard for even the calmest of students. even with extra time on tests, this was going to be more than a struggle.
     i won't go into the specifics of all my issues with the internship that came up over the first half of the semester. i've already bitched enough about it with my school friends. but the stress levels were rising fast. faster than i was even realizing at the time. by midterms i was having sudden crying fits regularly and didn't have time to make myself real meals. my mom came up the weekend before midterms to feed me and give me some leftovers for awhile. i came to the conclusion that things needed to change. i started talking to different teachers about it. by the time i had finished midterm week i had cried in front of 6 teachers within a week.
     the day after midterms i called in sick to the internship so that i could go see a dr and get a prescription for my old anti-depressants and make appointments with my therapist and psychiatrist. i was so busy that i felt like i didn't even have time to do that before. the day after that i had a meeting with the teacher that runs the internships about how i really wanted to back off on the internship so that i could focus on the classes. i ended up having a conversation with him and the head of the department and they both wanted me to try and push through. i felt like they weren't really listening to me or believing me.
     during that meeting i started to have stomach pain that only got worse as the day went along. in the middle of the night around 3 am i woke up with indigestion and couldn't fall back to sleep. by 4 am my tossing and turning in bed had gotten really bad and i was feeling really anxious. all of a sudden i felt things i had never felt before. my whole body suddenly had a hot flash with sweaty hands and i starting to feel an intense tingling sensation all over my body with pressure in my chest. as i started breathing hard and grabbing for my phone my heart started racing and pounding so hard i was convinced i was having a heart attack. i called 911.
     i was home alone that night since my roommate was out of town and had to try and walk to the door and unlock it as i was feeling like i was dying. but the front door of this old house would get jammed up and i had such weak hands that i couldn't finish turning the lock. the paramedics had to break the door in. by this time both of my hands were cramping which only made me more convinced that i was close to death. the paramedics were amazing and checked out my heart and tried to calm me down. they saw that there were no abnormalities with my heart and were trying to explain to me that it was a panic attack and that i had to breath slower and calm down. this felt nearly impossible.
    i remember being so grateful that they were there and taking such good care of me. i kept thanking them over and over again. they guy who sat with me in the ambulance did his best to distract me with conversation so that i could calm down. i wished i could have him hold my hand and stay with me till my parents met me at the hospital. but he had other places to be and people to save. i ended up alone in the hospital as my brother and mom drove to me in the early morning.
    there were three waves to this panic attack. they literally came hourly and each one was not quite as bad as the one before it. i didn't leave the hospital for several hours. i was tired and wired at the same time. i needed sleep but knew i wasn't going to get any for awhile. and since this attack occurred in the middle of the night, i was afraid to go back to sleep. i went home with my mom and brother to my parents place with the agreement that i not do any work for the rest of the weekend.
    eventually my teachers at school found out about my attack and we had a meeting where it was agreed that i would drop the internship and focus on the classes and that i would redo the internship in the summer. and even though a giant weight was lifted off my shoulders, i still was having daily panic attacks. they would happen in class and then i would have to take an ativan which would pretty much make me fall asleep in class. and then they often happened either when i was trying to fall asleep or in the middle of the night. eventually i was put on stronger and longer lasting sedatives that stopped the panic attacks. the problem then was that while i still had a lot of school work to do, now i was tired all the time and didn't hardly have the energy to do the work.
    eventually the classes felt a little easier and the panic attacks were staying away with less meds. i was talking regularly with my therapist and she kept pointing out that i would use language that implied that i was a victim. she focused on my interpretation of the events and that i'm not a victim, i just have had a specific reaction to a specific kind of stress. but it was hard not to feel like i was under attack by my classes and teachers. it was hard not to see them as big jerks that were trying to put me through hell on purpose.
    when i'm under stress i get little relief from sleep because i end up with regular stressful dreams and nightmares. the ones where i was getting stressed out in class or in the internship were easy to interpret. others just left me feeling anxious when i woke up. i tried not to think about them too much.
    now the semester is over and the dreams have decreased but a movie i saw recently made me think about them. for the first time i saw the movie The Hunger Games. To be honest, it's a little too similar to my nightmares. this feeling of being under attack, hunted, chased, on the verge of dying were common themes in my dreams. it makes sense when you add the language of being a victim. the feeling of stress when you are under attack and go into fight or flight mode is the same as the stress felt during grad school. maybe some part of the brain can't tell the difference and brings these dreams and perception of being a victim about when i'm just taking courses in a program i signed up for. i chose to go through this. i chose to be here in this program with these people. but after being stressed for so long, i just felt like they were constantly attacking various aspects of my being: ruining my health and confidence and putting my future in danger if i didn't pass my classes.
     i haven't had a panic attack in awhile but i often find myself worrying that i could have one. i know it does me no good, but it's hard not to worry now that i know it can happen. i focus too much on the way my chest feels or how my hands feel. if something reminds me of how i felt that first time, i perseverate on it. it takes a lot of work to redirect my thoughts and get out of that place. i feel that this will be something i will be working on for some time.
    but the semester is over and i will not be taking any more finals for grad school. just internships left. and i have a new puppy that brings so much light and happiness into my life. he pulled me out of a panic attack once just by licking my forehead as i lied on the floor. i've found a lot of peace through my relationships. i am so grateful for my family and friends. they not only listen, they make me feel loved and understood. i hope i can provide the same support to them as they provide for me. and i hope that anyone else out there who is going through the same kind of thing that i went to has the same kind of support i had. no words of wisdom yet, just wishing you all strength and love.

Samsung Galaxy S4 cases

I recently got a new phone which means I need a new case. I'm very excited to find out that Society 6 started making S4 cases!

http://society6.com/cases

so below are my top choices, but it's so hard to choose.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

What do you think?

sigh :-/

     i'm having one of those weekends where i can't bring myself to do the work i know i need to do. a couple weeks ago was my spring break and i got done all the things that absolutely needed to be done right then, and then i just couldn't do anymore. i got frustrated trying to plan a hang out with an Orange County friend who just ended up blowing me off. kinda wasted a couple days waiting to hang out with him. but i relaxed and couldn't really bring myself to do anything else.
     and then last week was my first week at a new internship doing physical therapy with kids. it's pretty great but pretty exhausting. it's a really physical job and so many of these kids have cerebral palsy and they have all this tone in their muscles so when my boss/teacher is trying to teach me by having me do range of motion and muscle tests with them, i'm just working against all this resistance the whole time. by the end of the day i am completely spent.
     but of course there are always a million things coming up and i should be working on several things right now. but i just can't seem to do any of them. i just wanna stay in bed all day. i did make a few easter eggs look like characters from The Watchmen. that was fun. but then i watched the most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother and had a good cry. i think i'm bummed out a little cuz with all the stress of dealing with grad school, i have no one to come home to. sometimes i think a pet would help. but i don't know if my "roomie" (she is currently subletting a place in san diego but all of her stuff is still here) would let me get one since this is her dad's house.
     and i'm so over dating. i've been on so many dates for so many years. i'm tired of it. and i don't have a ton of free time to spend finding guys to date in the first place. i just want someone to come home to. i wanna have someone to watch movies and tv shows with. i wanna have someone to curl up in bed with every night. and i really need someone who can kicked me out of bed and get me to do the work i can't seem to do right now. sometimes it would just be nice to have someone hold my hand as i weather the storms. cuz grad school can have some really shitty storms.
   actually, for last week i have been crashing at my parents' place since they live closer to my internship. there are definite pro's and con's. i love them so much and it's so great to spend time with them. but it's a little crowded there. i'm actually staying on an air mattress in their office. it's not super comfy which is why i spent the weekend at my place so i can sleep on my bed for a few nights. i don't get work done at my parents house cuz i'd rather spend time with them. but then i come home and i'm too tired and bummed to do work here either.
     no solutions, just a countdown to summer. and thinking about the countdown only stresses me out cuz i think of all the work that needs to get done before then. ugh, being an adult sucks. wish i could just built a fort and act like a kid for awhile. but again, i wanna have someone being a kid in the fort with me. and i really could use a massage after sleeping on that damn air mattress. sigh :-/

where to live

            Sometimes I wonder how my life would be different if some of the technology and social media available today had been around just 10-ish years ago. When I was 19 in 2002, I tried moving to NYC to dance. It quickly became too difficult to be out there by myself. I was very stressed and very lonely. There was no facebook, skype, or the fancy smart phones to share texts and photos in a heartbeat. It seems a lot easier these days to stay in touch with loved ones who are far away than ever before. I wonder if I would have stayed in NY longer. If I would have stayed till I actually got into a company. If I could have become comfortable there with the life of a poor dancer working odd jobs to help pay the rent. Who knows what kind of different friendships and relationships I could have had there.

            I think ultimately I would have ended up back in California anyways. When I was younger I didn’t think about getting married or having kids. They seemed like things that could get in the way of a dance career. And when I realized I would be happier without the dance career, I started to think about those things. I know realize that I do want those things. And I came to the conclusion that if I could have it my way, I would probably stay in California. Not because the state is amazing or there is a city here that I just have to live in. It’s because my family is here. My oldest friends of 20 years are here. If I’m gonna get married and have a family someday, I wanna do it in driving distance of them. I want my children to grow up around them.

            I know that with this economy, people can’t be too picky about where they live. I know that when I finally graduate from my physical therapy program, I will probably have to move to wherever my first job happens to be. But if I get a choice, I want to raise my family near those most important to me. So I guess I’ll just have to see what life has in store for me. I used to think it would be romantic to move anywhere to be with the one you love. But you get older and realize that there are a lot of people you love. Hopefully I’ll get lucky and find someone I can start a family with here.

update, i'm 30 bitch!

Today is weird. Life is weird. My mind is all over the place but I feel like talking (or writing) so we’ll see how this goes.

            School started back up again. Back to life, back to reality (that’s a Dylan Moran quote). So I was really nervous about being in a classroom with 94 people I didn’t know. Luckily the one person I did know is awesome and introduced me to all these amazing people. The new friends I have made are so sweet and fun to be around. I only knew them a couple weeks when several came to my birthday party. I’m still a bit tentative when it comes to school in general but it’s a million times better than it was a year ago. I’m taking fewer classes but I’m still at school all day long and it’s exhausting. But having less pressure when it comes to grades is making a huge difference right now.

            Sometimes living in this culture is exhausting. It’s looked down on if you aren’t productive and always working hard. Sometimes I like being sick (like I am today) because it’s the only time when people tell me I “should” go home and rest. Guilt free relaxation and all it took was a little virus. I’m naturally the sort of person how wants to have relaxing, unproductive days at least once a week. It’s lovely. But only when I’m sick is it acceptable to sleep all day, watch DVDs in bed for hours, and eat yummy snacks. Sometimes I think I was supposed to live in Italy. Why can’t we all take naps in the afternoon, stay up late drinking wine with friends, and go hang out all day eating gelato and enjoying beautiful architecture and art? Maybe it’s the artist in me, the one that needs to “feed my soul” and live my life for pleasure more than productivity. I don’t want to be remembered for my career. I want to be remembered for my loves. I get weighed down by too many “should”s and get tempted to run away to Europe. Maybe one of these days I will find a way to go back and forth between here and there. Till then I will have to settle for my “me” days and tell the world to fuck off.

            My 30^th birthday party was a blast. I had never thrown a party like that before with all the decorating and the planning. It was actually fun dealing with all the details of it. I did learn that you could, in fact, use scissors to the point of pain. I’m still tender to touch on this one part of my thumb. It was amazing bringing friends who didn’t know each other together. Made me realize what amazing taste I have in friends. Some of the people who couldn’t make I genuinely am not unhappy with, I just would’ve loved to have their company that night. But there are some I am genuinely unhappy with.

             I guess I thought of my “bar friends” as being real friends. But apparently most of them can’t be bothered to hang out with me unless they happen to run into me at the bar they already were planning on going to that night. It’s not like I was asking them to drive 100 miles for some random, inconsequential hang out. It was my 30^th birthday. It’s a big one. And then, on top of not going to the party, most didn’t respond to the invite at all to let me know either way, or even wish me a happy birthday. I’m sorry, I just assumed that our “friendship” meant that they respected me enough for that kind of courtesy and thoughtfulness. It makes me never want to go to that bar again. Which isn’t hard considering it is now 40 miles away. I was gladly driving there and figuring out sleeping arrangements so that I could see them fairly regularly, but I guess that effort was in vain.

            So I’m here, feeling about the same as I did before my birthday. No big answers figured out. Not quite living the “grown up” life of other people my age. I’m not married. I don’t have kids. I’m still living off student loans and help from my parents because I’m too busy with school to have a job that allows me to be fully independent. Not that independence is all that it’s cracked up to be. Regardless of how I depend on them, whether financially or emotionally, I will always be dependent on my loved ones. I know I never want to be too far from them or go too long without being in touch with them. I have to start thinking about the big internships I have coming up next year. There are a lot of clinics in different states that I’m sure would be easier to get due to decreased competition for them, but I can’t bear the idea of not being in driving distance of my family and closest friends for more than a couple weeks. So I’m really only looking at the LA area, Orange County area, and San Diego area. San Diego wouldn’t be perfect but I could drive up on the weekends or have visitors there without it being a giant headache.

            Still nothing figured out when it comes to love. I have no idea who I should be with. I feel like whenever my friends think I should be with someone it’s cuz they see how similar I am to that person. But I don’t wanna date myself. I don’t want someone too similar to me. But since I don’t know what I want, I’m stuck with suggestions and hints that make me uncomfortable. I was watching the movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World and found myself identifying with this one aspect of Kiera Knightley’s character.  She said she had parents who were so perfect for each other that she couldn’t bring herself to marry anyone who wasn’t as good a match for her as they were for each other. I just haven’t felt remotely close to finding the right match yet. And I’m the sort of person who, once I have figured out that I can’t see myself ending up with someone, won’t just stay with them so I’m not alone. I can’t do it. So I’m always alone.

            It would be nice to finally have a date for Valentine’s Day. But I’m not gonna go out with someone I really don’t want to be out with just so I have a date on Valentine’s Day. Having a crappy date with someone I don’t like seems like a much worse time than hanging out by myself at home. If I can hang out with friends instead, great, but I don’t wanna hear them complain about being alone on Valentine’s Day. I don’t wanna hear someone who always has a date for it complain about the first time they don’t. It’s childish to think that that day can’t be worthwhile without a date. It’s just another day. And if you’re a girl who likes the color pink, then at least you get to be surrounded by pink things everywhere you go. And you get to laugh at the people who take it too seriously and just end up ruining it for themselves. Having had a lifetime of no Valentines, I think I’ll know how to appreciate one when it comes my way. So, to my friends with Valentines who give them chocolates, enjoy. And I’ll help you finish those, if you want.

            And I’m really looking forward to having cable and internet again. The old system ran out last week and the new system doesn’t get set up till Friday. And using my phone as a “mobile wi-fi hotspot” is a pain in the ass cuz I really don’t get good reception here. Now, I think I’ll go spend the next three hours trying to watch one of my favorite tv shows online :/