Dear anita,

how are you?

The past week was mixed for me. Some days I  was able to follow a routine. At 7:00 am I would wake up, then do Yoga (only 10-30 minutes), then draw for a bit, prepare lunch/eat lunch, draw some more, then go for a walk and journal while outside, sitting on a bench. I thought that I had finally figured it out, but then there were some days again when I didn’t get much done.

Today I also got up (a bit after 7:00 am), did Yoga for 20 minutes, cleaned the flat, showered, cooked lunch. Now in the afternoon I want to draw more. Maybe go for a walk again later. So far, it was not too bad, even though I still got distracted by the internet.

Often I feel like I don’t get enough done, that I should be more productive. I feel sometimes so useless, worse now that I don’t work.

At least I have improved a bit, did Yoga, journaled, drew regularly for a few days. I am now almost finished with an old project that I started years ago. So I am learning and getting better. I am trying to tell myself that it is o.K. and that it is good enough to make an o.K. use of my time.

It could still be worse. But I really want to overcome getting easily distracted by the internet. My therapist and I talked about it repeatedly, but it is hard to stick to the things discussed. For example, I should not look at my phone in the morning.Today I even woke up before 7:00 am,but then looking at the phone made me postpone the start of the day. What a bad start! I do not want that to happen again… So some rules I want to keep, that I also discussed with my therapist:

1) Not look at the phone in the morning

2) No internet while eating (Magazines are still allowed)

3) No internet before noon

Maybe writing this down here will help. So far, I wasn’t doing so good. But I have to try again.

By the way the life admin day (LAD was supposed to mean life admin day) went well. I did almost all the things on my list, except writing a thank you note for my mentor. Maybe I should set another date for that.

About my mother: thinking about telling her that is pretty scary. I have not talked about it with her yet. My therapist said, that this would be a good occasion to practice telling people how I feel. But I also feel like my response to her was an o.K. solution. I thanked for her kind words, but didn’t say “I love you” in my message.

Well, I am still running away from communicating openly. Why is it such a horror for me? Why do I have so much resistance? I have a very hard time telling others my uncomfortable feelings.

Yet, I would prefer that others would communicate openly with me. It really seems that most people don’t do it.Even my tough colleague couldn’t tell my other colleague that she was not satisfied before talking to management.

Maybe the world would be a better place, if people talked about their problems directly. But so far, I was not strong enough to do that too often.

About my friend: she is indeed very busy. She wants to save money now and work full time, so she can work less next semester. At one hand I admire her hard work, on the other only hearing about it makes me feel stressed. Sometimes I get the feeling that she wants to do all at once. She works six days a week now, more than 40 hours per week I think. I worry a bit, hopefully she will take care of her health. But she knows best what she wants.

I don’t know, if I should call her or reach out to her until she comes to me again (at the moment, I called about once a week)? One thing, I do not want to add to her stress, and on the other hand, I feel weird being always the one who calls first. And then I always get the feeling that I say the wrong things, maybe I am not supportive enough. To be honest, once it happened that she talked about herself and then I changed the subject to me, which I realized later and regretted. Maybe I am thinking way too much about all of this? Or maybe I am not a good friend? I have worried about this a lot lately. Hopefully I will be able to work again soon too, so I will have more distraction.

I guess I am feeling lonely, but I should focus on the positive things. This week I even went to the river beach. It was a very nice day. I brought some potato salad I had made one day before, an apple and an egg. Then I sat down at the beach, ate my food and journaled for a while. And I watched the people around me. There were a lot of families, children climbing on a tree nearby and playing with the sand. Later I walked back on the shore and collected some river shells. It was a bit like a mini-holiday.

It was a very nice and sunny day. Today it is raining again (but it’s good for the plants). I should be thankful to be safe and that I will be able to spend time drawing today.

I hope you are well as well! You said you live close to Canada, somehow I imagined you living in California. Is it slowly becoming summer too where you live? Here I can hear the swallows now more often, so summer can’t be far.

Have a nice day!