[Perna]

I hate GAD and not quite knowing what I'm anxious about. Things start to warp so rainy days take on more significance than rainy days deserve! It reminds me of Madelaine L'Engle's book, A Wind in the Door which literally starts, "It was a dark and stomy night" like the cliche.

My husband claims I don't have an "I don't know" bucket. I want to know always what I can reasonably expect to happen. We don't have Thanksgiving plans, there's 2-3 things happening "around" us but I was banging on him yesterday to decide on what we want and "go for it," put our interest/energy behind it. A couple years ago we ended up with just ourselves and went to a restaurant early in the day and when we got home, there was an embarrassed message from his brother inviting us up (only a couple hours away). We could easily invite ourselves there or have been invited other places but we hang back and "wait" to see if so-and-so is going there or what's happening, etc. To a lesser extent we do the same thing for Christmas week.

When things get muddy, when I get several things started and one or more develop a problem of some sort or I get unsure of my choices, I start feeling like I'm juggling knives blindfolded or something.

Early September, I was taking two courses in grad school for this semester and had a medical problem that frustrated me and I just dropped out of school one morning and deleted everything having to do with school off my computer in anger. An hour later I had signed up for a totally different course of study at another school and reasoned myself into thinking I would resume my first course next semester if I was better by then. I was doing well in the new course but then had an assignment it took 3 tries to get right. After that, the next assignment I still haven't gotten right. I have spent 3-4 weeks between looking at the assignments I can't get and I'm only 3 lessons (but 6-8 assignments) from the end of that course but I may just drop out of it (which will depress me). I have confused myself by finding another course of study like my first course and applied to it (and not heard anything back) and have a fallback plan for resuming my first course if other things don't pan out but none of them interest me but I have nothing else "in the fire" to look forward to or take my interest. So I'm sitting with wreckage around me; a kid with new toys she's broken all of and doesn't know what to do next.

The other night I was with a friend and it was late afternoon but the already dusk since daylight savings has gone. Lights were coming on in buildings, etc. and we were at a coffee shop and she ran in to get us a couple and I was sitting waiting in the car and saw a building that triggered me slightly from 50+ years ago.

The building vaguely reminded me of the first year after my father married my stepmother; I was 5, and my stepmother took me "everywhere" with her because of my age/need for care and/or would have me stay with various girl cousins my age or near my age, etc. Only they weren't "my" cousins, they and their parents were my stepmother's brothers, sisters-in-law and nieces so I hadn't known these people very long or even my stepmother for that matter. But I remember once going to "school" with a cousin who was younger than I was, it was a private nursery I guess, but it was a fall or winter day and I didn't know anyone. My cousin melted into her class and the teacher tried to include me but the kids were younger than I was and I hadn't ever been there before and knew no one, etc. It was a very lonely, "odd-feeling"/disorienting 2-3 hours until the aunt came and picked us up and we resumed "normal" life. But at that period in my life I had lots of experiences like that one, being strange places with people I didn't know. I think this nursery school experience stayed with me because it was so unlike my own public school experience. Thinking about it now I imagine public school was out that day for some holiday that the nursery school wasn't and my mother needed a "babysitter" for me.

But it was a wholly different world than I was accustomed to; different sights, souonds, smells, people, even the sense of "time" was different. I carry that with me now, still. When I lived in Washington, D.C. where the event took place I use to "look for" the real school, I was too young to have a clue where it actually was and all those people are dead or gone from my life. But still I get anxious, like the other night, when I view certain buildings in certain light or I'm in certain circumstances where I am just a "passenger". The coffee shop the other night was in Baltimore, not anywhere near the school. I think the gray dusk brought the feeling out because I believe it was a rainy day when I was at the nursery.

So now I have a rainy morning and I'm thinking about this, feeling the mood, and thinking about my current situations and moods and how I'm drifting along, not quite connected to what's going on "around" me. Where's the sun when you need it?

[Mouse_]

Perna, They are some powerful memorys. I would imagine it was very scary being taken to strange places, by semi-strange people, and yes, dull, rainy days seem to comfort and sadden at the same time, and holidays always have a nack of reminding one of ones aloneness at times.

[Perna]

I didn't figure a lot of stuff out until a couple years ago in therapy. I have never liked going to other people's houses, especially to babysit and never quite understood why. It only occurred to me late in therapy that my stepmother, who was "new" to me, taking me around and introducing me to all those new people and places, dropping me off (is someone going to come back and get me? :-) and the constant change didn't help any of my inborn shyness/anxiety!

But I really hate when something such as "weather" or a "building" can cause feeling states that I can't track because they're so vague or long ago. Working with T for a zillion years to get words helped a lot; I use to have all sorts of bizarre almost panic reactions to smells and such, kept getting whipped back 40 or 50+ years by the scruff of my neck and I absolutely hated that with a passion! Hate lack of control over at least myself!

[Mouse_]

You know its buildings and weather that bring back feeling memorys for me too. I think it was because as a child, stuck with my fears and not having the words like you say, buildings and weather became my compass, I related to them in their starkness and and alonesss. A tall warehouse building reminds me of my saddness at being alone with my fears and rainy days I used to walk with me. It was like mr moon was crying with me.

[no_peep_outa_me]

When you say it took you several tries on an assignment and you still couldn't get it right, was the "not right" judgment coming from the professor or from you? Just curious. I usually put enormous expectations on myself. I'm much more demanding than my professors would even care to be. So, to alleviate some of the anxiety, I ask a lot of questions. "What do you mean by... ?" "Can you show me an example of... ?" It's when I don't ask questions, when I silently sit and stare at a packet of reading or pieces of a project, that I melt down into a pool of grad-school ooze. ; )

[Perna]

I'm taking a computer course on XML, no-peep: http://www.oreillyschool.com/

It's totally self-directed with a live "tutor" who corrects the quizzes and assignments you complete after you finish a lesson. You get a green smiley face or a red frowny face to tell you if you "passed" or not and then an explanation if you get the frowny face LOL. Because it's self-directed/self-taught it can be frustrating emailing back and forth with the tutor trying to explain where you're stuck and her giving you clues without outright telling you how to do it. But it took me 3 tries to finally get the one right and then the very next one I have gotten stuck on and have "given up" I think. I've worked on it for several hours but don't know where I'm stuck (or I'd get unstuck :-) and my programmer husband says I'm very lost (which he can tell because he sees me randomly trying things instead of "knowing" what to do). Part of it is my fault because I don't pay much attention to things/learn them too well, I look at examples and "copy" them and learn that way. Well, it gets to a point where you're supposed to know principles and how things work and I haven't taken the time/effort to learn as I was going along. So, I'm lost unless I go back several lessons (not easy because the lessons are one place and the files to use another couple places and the assignments still another place so just coordinating a single lesson is hard much less trying to keep track of 3 lessons ago and how it relates to then and now and all inbetween. They have you build on what you've already done so you have several versions of the same/similar file and I've had to "chart" on paper what goes where, etc. :-) I don't think I'm being hard on myself other than I don't think things through, whether I want to do something to completion; I'm a tad impulsive that way :-) But then I end up with lots of plans/half-backed things going on and they just sit there "accusing" me. What makes that worse is I may have lost interest in something but the formal ties have to be broken if that's true (which takes effort on my part) AND I don't have anything pulling me forward, no "reason" to quit or way to trade for something else because I don't have something else.

So I keep the "wreckage" around me to give the illusion that I am going to or "could" pick it up again so it goes on longer and I get feeling more guilty, etc. I have a desktop computer upstairs and I think I don't use it very much, go in that room (my husband's and my office) because that computer has at least two huge projects that I didn't complete (and now cannot) still on it "waiting" for me. Of course there are supporting books and papers and correspondence, etc. for each and, just last month, I finally contacted a website I've been paying $10-$12 a month to for the last 3-4 YEARS that was related to one of them to cancel the payment! Now I'm doing the same thing with this XML course that requires a special website at $9.95 a month while I'm a student, automatically charged to my credt card. Not only do I have a lot of ideas/projects I start but I don't clean up after them so I'm surrounded by "could be" fantasies which add to my sense of vagueness.