Month: August 2015

Monday…Not So Bad After All

Standard

This post may seem odd on the heels of yesterday’s post, but bear in mind that yesterday’s post took me days to write, and to decide if I was actually going to write about the things that I did. It’s important for at least myself for me to write about those things, to have a record and see if I notice a pattern, or even to just be reminded if it happens again, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and that I’ll be okay.

Today was pretty great overall. It was a frustrating day at work because bug fixing for Internet Explorer is just awful. Note to front end devs, flexbox is super freaking awesome…if the only IE you have to worry about is 10 and up. It works swimmingly on Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. It’s a brilliant tool, but since we still need to support IE9 on most projects, it’s more complicated since that browser doesn’t support it. Oddly enough, though, I ended the day in a decent mood. The frustration didn’t really upset me like it has been. It also makes me feel good that my boss is confident that I can get better with programming to help with those projects coming up that don’t necessarily have a front end aspect. I will always prefer front end development, but I do get really excited when I do a programming piece and make it work, especially if there is a bit of a struggle and then a victory. I just really like solving puzzles, and both back and front end development are like weird puzzles that can be hard to solve.

Lukas was absolutely awesome this afternoon, all afternoon. He was in a very happy, fun, hilarious mood, and he didn’t end up in time out once. It was fantastic. I love his funny little personality so much. When I told him he couldn’t do or have something, and offered an alternative, he was very receptive. We took him to the gym to play while we worked out with our trainer, he loves it there. When I gave him a shower this evening, he was happy and decided he wanted to play with the water and dance and sing.

Mine and Bobby’s work out with our trainer this evening was great! It was only our second session, but the experience has been nothing but positive already. He started the session by telling us that we both look a little more lean than last week, which is awesome since we both managed to make it to the gym three times last week. We decided recently that we just need to try harder to be in shape, for nothing more than to just have some energy left after work at the end of the day to play with our rambunctious, daredevil 3 year old boy. Being thin and having muscle tone are just really great byproducts of working out and having the energy to be active. I have a half marathon to run in a month and a half, and I’m slightly terrified at how it’s going to go. Anyway, the workout was really awesome, he had more of an idea of our abilities this time and gave us some fun full body workouts to do during this session, and he gave us a routine to do throughout the week. He also recommended doing a morning fasted run on the weekend, since that’s an excellent fat burner. I used to only run first thing in the morning, but I just haven’t wanted to get up early enough. If I find I’m able to wake up earlier, I might start doing that again. It’s dark by the time Lukas is in bed now, and even though I live in a very safe, well-lit area, I’m not all about running by myself at night. Something about it just really freaks me out.

I got to chat with one of my best friends about her life in Boston tonight. I know she’s super happy, and that she’s doing great work at a job that she loves, but I miss her. Talking to her tonight was really nice, and made me realize I need to make time to go see her in Boston, it sounds lovely.

I kind of wonder if the negative wave of emotions I was feeling last week was a result of my hormones going nuts after starting a brand new workout routine. I haven’t weight trained in a long time, and I was way more active last week than I have been in a long time. I do have a history of struggling with negative emotions that I have a hard time pulling out of, but it’s very possible that it’s just a temporary chemical surge that caused it. I say that because I’m feeling awesome tonight, and just yesterday morning I was struggling with feeling very upset out of nowhere about nothing in particular. It also hit me really hard out of nowhere for seemingly no particular reason. Thankfully, it happens way less frequently than it used to, it’s been quite a while since it’s been that bad.

It could honestly be a multitude of things that helped. Writing about it may have helped, not only to get the negative stuff out, but also writing about how good I have it. Sometimes I have to remind myself that when there’s nothing in particular causing my sadness and self-confidence issues, I just need to look around at my family, my wonderful and supportive husband, my amazing little boy, my dogs, my job that I love, and my friends, and realize that things are good. I don’t know if this works for everyone, I’ve never been diagnosed with anything and I’ve never taken any medication for it, I just know that I get uncontrollably sad and negative sometimes, and it can take a little while to dig myself out of the pit of despair, so to speak. Bobby’s never-ending support always helps, he’s able to help me be objective, even when I don’t want to be. Maybe my body has balanced out since I worked out regularly last week. I really don’t know. I’m just glad that the terrible feeling I was having has receded, and that I had a pretty awesome start to the week.

On Difficult Emotional Times

Standard

I keep going back and forth about what I really want to write in this post. I don’t know how much I want to share, but maybe it’ll help push it all out if I just write about all of the super personal inner workings of my brain. I’ve been struggling a lot worse than in the past lately, for what seems like no apparent reason. Maybe the only purpose for this post will be to let anyone who is feeling the same way know that they are not alone. I promise, I’m not always this way.

So, lately, my brain gremlin has made its way out of its cave in the recesses of my mind to make me feel terrible about every aspect of who I am. Referring to this horrible, unseen creature as a gremlin is not my original idea. In fact, it came from this book that Bobby bought me probably close to 10 years ago. It is a great book and helped me quite a lot. Apparently, though, I need to go back and read it again to get refreshers on how to banish this awful thing back to where its been hiding. I’d love to think I can just get rid of it altogether, but I’m not sure that’s possible. There are a lot of complicated ingredients that go into making me into the person that I am, both bad and good. More on all of that at a later time. Some of it has left me scarred, and sometimes I feel a little broken because my emotions can get really overwhelming, even positive ones. I used to have a very low opinion of myself, and I’m still not fully on the confidence train most of the time, but I get by. I had been feeling a little bit down for maybe the past week or so. Earlier this week, though, and on and off since, I was just full on feeling horrible about my abilities at my job, at home as a partner, as a mom, as a friend, really as a person. It kind of came out of nowhere and blindsided me. I had one day where I just felt terrible and nothing was really making it go away. A nice run in the evening at least helped. This recent bout of whatever this is has reminded me of how far I’ve come, but also how far I still have to go. I now have the ability to feel like I’m good at things that I enjoy and work hard at, and I can frequently accept compliments without coming back with something negative, or even something as lame as ‘yeah, right’. That’s not the case all the time, though. Especially recently. I’ve become terrible at accepting any compliments again because I just can’t allow myself to believe they’re genuine. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this badly, but it’s been ebbing and waning. A lot of times, some physical activity, or some socialization, or even talking about it with Bobby, helps push it off a little. I know that I’m really hard on myself, and that I need to let up, but that’s easier said than done. I don’t really have much advice on how to deal with stuff like this, distracting myself helps, activity and little victories definitely help. I’m still re-figuring out how to not just be completely, ridiculously hard on myself.

I used to be much, much worse. On top of having no confidence in myself, I was also very shy and introverted. This is after high school that I’m talking about, too. I struggled with low self image in high school, but that seems pretty common. Even after finding an awesome boyfriend (who I eventually married), I still struggled with it all. He really helped me overcome it when it was really bad. He helped give me ways to come out of my shell and just be able to say hi to strangers as I walked past them, and he also helped me find ways to feel good about myself and feel confident. I’m still a work in progress, and a lot of times I brush off what he says as him just saying things because he loves me, but I’m a lot more receptive to hearing positive things about myself than I used to be. It’s not a fun thing to experience, hearing positive things about myself and just brushing them off as a knee-jerk reaction because I just can’t let myself believe they’re genuine since they’re coming from someone who cares about me. That’s kind of dumb, and I know that, but it’s not so easy to overcome that.

There has been a lot of good this week, though. Monday was our first time working with a personal trainer and getting back in the gym to do some weight training, and we managed to go a few times this week with a short workout plan he gave us. Lukas is both super awesome and insanely difficult at the same time, but such is life as a 3 year old. He’s so funny, smart, and loving. He is also very independent and opinionated. We’ve had some delicious dinners and spent some time with good people. We went and spent some time with old friends on Tuesday night, always a good time with Ben, Missy and the Ullmann family. Lukas and I had a mom and kid date with Meghann and Ben. Yesterday, Bobby and I spent a good portion of the day at Plex letting Lukas run around and play while we tried to write and traded writing pieces with Christian to get feedback from each other. Last night, we got another big chunk of our new 3d printer done, connecting most of the cables. Today, we went shopping, got an oil change for my car, and took turns working out. Running after a pretty intense workout is hard, and I was a bit down on myself for not having a very great run. Bobby had to remind me that I’m not used to weight training and then running, and that it’s good that I ran at all. Later on, we went to a family birthday party for my cousin’s little girl, who is absolutely adorable. After he warmed up a bit, Lukas was his energetic, daredevil self, and people loved him for it. My papa had him cracking up, I love his deep belly laugh so much. I had a nice time catching up with my family. After this post, I’ll snuggle up with my love and chill out before we head to bed to get ready for another week.

I really do have a great life, and I am surrounded by awesome people. I think maybe that is potentially the key to getting through this rough patch, realizing how great things really are. It’s sometimes hard to see it with that terrible gremlin constantly tossing negative things around my mind. I just have to re-learn how to send it back to where it came from. I’ve started drawing what I think it looks like. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the drawing yet, if anything. Maybe just drawing it will help get the negativity out that I’m feeling. That might sound a little bit odd, but it could potentially help. Who knows. Bobby and I are taking a 4 day vacation up to Bellaire for our anniversary in a couple of weeks, and we’re taking a full week off of work to get stuff done around the house, I think that break will help reset me.

Small Victories

Standard

Today was a day for small victories, as the title implies. Small victories are important, though. Sure, the big ones are fantastic and exhilarating. However, it’s the small ones that keep you going when you’re frustrated, or when you’re just about to give up. I’d say they’re almost more important, because they help keep you going, and help you realize that yes, you really can do it.

The first victory, and most important one to me at the moment, was that I was working on a project at work today that had three boxes that were structured exactly the same, just with different information and colors. I had originally written out the code to be very repetitive. I should add here that I develop in WordPress primarily, and almost exclusively at the moment (yes, I will build my own theme for this site eventually). So, when I structure a page in a site, I’m pulling info from the admin onto the page (very simple explanation). I originally wrote out the PHP/HTML to be repetitive instead of looping it, because it was easier and I was already going over quote for the page as it was. Friday, I just couldn’t deal with my bad code anymore and decided to take the time to re-write it as a loop. Now, that sounds simple. For someone who doesn’t do programming as their primary job, I’m a front end developer, even though I got started in programming, it was a big frickin’ deal that I got it all working today. I had to pull info from multiple fields in three separate admin boxes, build some arrays, loop them out into three separate boxes, and each box also has unique links that are added in the admin, and there can be as many or as few as the user wants. So, I was pulling a lot of information, and doing a loop within a loop. I got really close to finishing it Friday, but I needed to get home, so I put the rest off to this morning. I got really close to giving up, because I was having a bit of trouble figuring the inner loop since I was accessing arrays within arrays inside of a loop within a loop. But, I did it!! I frickin’ did it, and it was glorious. I needed that.

Why did I need that? Because I’ve been feeling imposter syndrome hardcore lately, and let me tell you, it is an absolutely terrible feeling, and I think I really upset the people I care about when I just refuse to believe when they tell me I don’t suck. Imagine, if you haven’t experienced it, being at your job that you really enjoy and really care about, and feeling like you suck at it, that you somehow tricked your way into your job, that your boss will find out how terrible you are and fire you, and that you will never be good at this thing that you enjoy doing so much. It’s awful, and I don’t wish it on anyone. So, this is why I say that small victories are so important. I so desperately needed that little victory this morning, and it was enough to make me feel so great that I shouted with excitement, did a little happy dance, and made my friend come look at it because I was so proud of myself. That moment is what I need to remember next time I’m feeling so incredibly down about my abilities.

On an only somewhat unrelated note, Bobby and I had our very first session with our personal trainer today. It was hard, but it was really good. I did assisted pull-ups (I’ve never been able to do any pull-ups, the goal is to eventually not need to use a machine), and even though I had terrible form and had to modify my last 2 sets, I did 3 sets of 10 push-ups. I’ve never had any significant upper body strength. Again, even though it wasn’t great, it was a small victory. It made me realize that eventually, I won’t need to do modified push-ups, and that I can work up to unassisted pull-ups. It gave me goals. I finally got to do some kettle bell workouts, and some different weighted squats. My legs are jelly, but I feel happy. It’ll feel so great to be back in shape again. I’m a small person, and I can run and cycle, but I need to build muscle to truly be in shape. Our trainer is so awesome that he’s helping us adjust our diets and told us we can text him whenever we have questions. I have a great feeling about this step in our journey.

We’ve capped the night with a delicious dinner, time with our wonderful, hilarious child, a bit of housework, and some relaxing time. I hope I get some time to knit tonight, but I’d settle for some reading.

I guess, in closing, take the small victories and internalize them, because they’re an important part of your happiness. Tell people about them, write about them, remember them when you’re having a bad day. I’m not typically great at it, but I’m going to try to take my own advice here, because I think it’s one thing that will help battle the days that I’m frustrated, or down, or just feeling like I can’t win. The truth is, I can win, you can win, we all just have to remember that on the bad days.

A Short Introduction

Standard

I’ve always been terrible about blogging on a regular basis. However, I’m finding very frequently as of late that I really want/need a place to document every day life, my thoughts and feelings, the things that I’m interested in, things that I make, etc. etc. So, I’m going to try again, and hopefully be more successful this time.

I might make thoughtful, introspective posts. I might make posts about my life as a wife and mom. I might make posts about vacations/places I travel to. I might talk about what it’s like to be a front end web developer, and even maybe what it’s like to be a female front end web developer. Well, what it’s like for me as a female front end web developer, because everyone’s experiences are different. I’ve been fortunate to have no negative experiences, but I experience imposter syndrome way more often that I maybe should. Yes, I am a web developer writing a blog using someone else’s theme…I’ll build my own eventually when I someday have the time. Anyway, more on all of that later.

I also enjoy knitting, writing, craft beer, homebrewing, music, tabletop RPGs, video games, running, biking, hiking, being outside in general, working on fitness and all sorts of other things. I could potentially post about any of the things I’ve mentioned, plus maybe things I’m not even thinking of right now. I don’t expect to really get any attention or regular readers, this blog is really for me and people who might care to read what I have to talk about. So, hello.