Brain Hacking
Jan. 21st, 2008 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaHave been doing a lot of work in the way of attempted brain hacking lately. ~wry~ It is frustrating when it feels like it isn't sticking, but it helps to remind myself that these behaviors and views that I am trying to now change have had years and years of development, cultivation, and reinforcement.
One big realization that I don't think had really sunk in earlier: I've been feeling lonely and disconnected and overwhelmed for the past few months, and it seems to be getting worse. Well, let's see, what changed about the time that this started? Oh! I pulled up and made the biggest move that I have made in the past four years of living on this coast!
Granted, there were five other moves in there, but they were all in the DC region (Adams Morgan to Bethesda to Alexandria to Woodbridge to Annandale to Springfield) and for the furthest one out, Woodbridge, I moved in with friends. I had assumed that, especially since I'm practically on I-95, that I would still be in what my brain thinks of as the DC area.
I was wrong.
I am apparently, for my brain's intents and purposes, NOT in the DC region anymore. I'm also in a neighborhood with a demographic that I'm not used to, and I am living on my own for the first time since Alexandria, sooo... about two years... and I'm in a house that I own now for the first time ever.
No wonder I'm feeling uprooted. I am uprooted! So for now, I am endeavoring to be patient with myself, and remind myself that it will pass, and that I am doing things that will help with re-establishing human contact (like going to coffee with fellow geeks on Tuesdays). I know some people in Baltimore, too, but at the same time that's apparently a little outside my pain threshold for driving, at least on a regular basis. (I got burned out on that for the three months that I was living with a friend just southeast of the JHU Homewood Campus while I was working at APL and house hunting, but maybe that will heal a bit more with time).
Looking at it from that perspective, things are actually coming along reasonably well. That doesn't always shut the brainloops up, but it is something that helps.
The house is also nearing a state of my being comfortable with inviting people over. I think part of me is scared that nobody will want to come, or is just assuming that it'd be too far of a drive from the DC area for anyone to want to bother (I suspect, more specifically, that it is a part of my self-esteem ~wry~) but I've had one person mention a few times that he'd have come up if I'd have given him more notice, and another mention that I should invite his family up for gaming sometime, so that fear doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on. Not that that shuts it up; it apparently has the ability to levitate, but at least it is a little less scary that way ^_^
~smile~ And to paraphrase something that some awesome people have told me: If I ask for something, it is a lot more likely that I'll receive it.
One big realization that I don't think had really sunk in earlier: I've been feeling lonely and disconnected and overwhelmed for the past few months, and it seems to be getting worse. Well, let's see, what changed about the time that this started? Oh! I pulled up and made the biggest move that I have made in the past four years of living on this coast!
Granted, there were five other moves in there, but they were all in the DC region (Adams Morgan to Bethesda to Alexandria to Woodbridge to Annandale to Springfield) and for the furthest one out, Woodbridge, I moved in with friends. I had assumed that, especially since I'm practically on I-95, that I would still be in what my brain thinks of as the DC area.
I was wrong.
I am apparently, for my brain's intents and purposes, NOT in the DC region anymore. I'm also in a neighborhood with a demographic that I'm not used to, and I am living on my own for the first time since Alexandria, sooo... about two years... and I'm in a house that I own now for the first time ever.
No wonder I'm feeling uprooted. I am uprooted! So for now, I am endeavoring to be patient with myself, and remind myself that it will pass, and that I am doing things that will help with re-establishing human contact (like going to coffee with fellow geeks on Tuesdays). I know some people in Baltimore, too, but at the same time that's apparently a little outside my pain threshold for driving, at least on a regular basis. (I got burned out on that for the three months that I was living with a friend just southeast of the JHU Homewood Campus while I was working at APL and house hunting, but maybe that will heal a bit more with time).
Looking at it from that perspective, things are actually coming along reasonably well. That doesn't always shut the brainloops up, but it is something that helps.
The house is also nearing a state of my being comfortable with inviting people over. I think part of me is scared that nobody will want to come, or is just assuming that it'd be too far of a drive from the DC area for anyone to want to bother (I suspect, more specifically, that it is a part of my self-esteem ~wry~) but I've had one person mention a few times that he'd have come up if I'd have given him more notice, and another mention that I should invite his family up for gaming sometime, so that fear doesn't really have much of a leg to stand on. Not that that shuts it up; it apparently has the ability to levitate, but at least it is a little less scary that way ^_^
~smile~ And to paraphrase something that some awesome people have told me: If I ask for something, it is a lot more likely that I'll receive it.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-21 11:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-23 04:25 pm (UTC)