Overloaded

One effect of working on the comics is that I seem to be thinking more visually. Recently I had this image of me trying to push up a weight that was coming down on me. My first thought was that I would not be able to push effectively in this way, essentially pushing backwards, but also it was pretty clear I was feeling weighed down.

The Killing of Crazy Horse was a big part of it. The book was a slog, and while I was trying to get through it, I was frustrated by everything that was waiting until it was done, but really that one book only emphasized the real stress: everything else waiting to be done.

It is wonderful that I keep finding new sources of information and things to research and things I want to do. One thing I have noticed lately is that I feel younger, and I think that is because I am constantly trying new things and learning. I am off-balance a lot, because I am trying to get better at things I am not good at, but it's invigorating too.

Trying to balance all the things I want to do with what I need to do is a challenge. I recently moved from trying to keep all my checklists on various slips of paper to something digital. I started with a word document, but that was too disorganized so now I have a spreadsheet. It currently has eight tabs, with lots of entries. Some will go away, and some will just change.

That is basically pressure that I put on myself, and I should be able to relieve that, but some things feel urgent. It makes no logical sense for me to take on a community garden plot now, but I felt like I had too. Thinking about some of the things that feel important, I realized there is another factor that makes things feel heavier.

I sometimes refer to this other reading project, and I have never given it a good description or a good name, because it is hard to define. It has built up messily. I started with an idea that I wanted to know more so I could better help some of the people I have come to care about through Twitter. They are mostly teen girls, but not all. Sometimes I think of it as my troubled teen reading, but that imposes an unfair label on them. Sometimes I think of it as feminist reading, because there are some direct correlations, but that doesn't really describe it.

So, it was just this list of books that felt like they would be important. In July it was ten books, but several months later there are nine books left, even though I have read sixteen, I am nonetheless getting closer to the end.

I realized pretty early on that anything that I read for them would also be meaningful for me, and that there would be this long period of writing, between blog and journal, where things would be coming out, but that there could be some healing in there. That's good, but it doesn't tend to be easy. I feel this heaviness as some things start coming out, and as I feel the end approaching.

It is happening on levels I had not recognized. I don't think it's a coincidence that I suddenly needed a guitar, or that my math and science shortcomings started bothering me. My instincts seem to be working on gaining back the things I had given up on when I was a teenager. Thinking about everything that includes makes me feel a little like I am standing in front of Pandora's box, but there was hope in that box too, so deep breaths and keep going.

That means not breaking down, so I am having to put some things on hold, and be patient. I am so eager for some of the books I want to read, and I have a solid plan for making up that which I feel was missing academically in high school, but it is also something that I will probably not be able to start before September, and will take about two years to complete. I am not doing anything with language now, and I am not currently practicing guitar, because there are some other things I need to get done first. Right now the blog helps too much to cut, but if I feel I need to take a week or two off from it, that may happen.

With that initial image, of pushing backwards trying to not get crushed, because it was visual it was obvious that you don't have full strength that way. For full strength, you need to be facing it. That's what I'm working on over here.