Oh Where, Oh Where Has My Little Blog Gone
January 25, 2010
As I slog through the 2000+ unread emails in my inbox at 4 a.m. it occurs to me that the emotional well I’ve been falling into for the past two months is much, much deeper than I’ve been admitting to myself.
I’m about 1/3 the way through December and pausing to write this because I need to do it right now or it will simply be another blog post that I’ve thought about and haven’t written.
I haven’t really looked at my inbox since December 1st, 2009.
No, really. From December 1st through today, January 25th, I have let everything in my online life pretty much do the metaphoric equivalent of “Go To Voicemail.” I didn’t even know I was capable of doing that.
What happened?
Oh, I suppose I could say it was a combination of seasonal depression, a series of disappointing revelations about other people and relationships, the feeling that somehow I failed miserably at my last job, and a dozen other issues piled one on top of the other until it just snowballed into me ‘checking out.’
But the end result was pretty much that I hit a level of apathy and depression that let me just walk away.
The thing is – it’s this horrible spiral. You don’t let people know that it’s not just their emails you aren’t answering because you’re not seeing those emails at all. And they start to think there’s something wrong that is specific to them. Then there are repercussions.
Too many things fall through the cracks. You realize even from a huge emotional distance that there are probably things sitting in your inbox that are long past the point of “easy fixes” so you just avoid the inbox with more determination than ever and more things & people fall through the cracks.
I’ve never really experienced this sort of thing before.
I’ve been wired for so many years that it’s second nature to me to open up the computer and close out the rest of the world when I’m withdrawing into myself… In the past, it was phone calls, social events, and in person contact that fell by the wayside. I’ve never just ignored my email for weeks.
Then there’s the blog thing.
Oh, the blog thing.
It’s another “I just can’t face it today, I’ll try again tomorrow” area. Why? In my head, blogging but ignoring email is sort of the same as not showing up for work, not calling, not explaining why – but sitting in the coffee shop in the lobby of the building where you work pretending that there’s nothing out of the ordinary.
How could I write here when there are people who have sent me dozens of emails without so much as a “Lucretia is out of the universe right now, please leave a message at the sound of the beep and she’ll get back to you when she stops spiraling out of control” response?
So no email, no blogging. What else fell into the apathy well?
Twitter. Meaningful interactions online. Work. Projects I’d committed myself to but haven’t even touched. Pretty much everything that had to do with the computer except, oddly, mindless Facebook games. Oddly, if it was something that consisted of repetition without strategy or conversation, I’ve been fanatical about it. Given that I’m usually attracted to the opposite, I’m still trying to figure that one out.
What didn’t fall into the well?
My family. My daughter and my husband – and a number of my extended family. A few good friends. Getting up out of bed, eating, getting through the bits of the day that are really necessary if you’re not going to live in a dark closet.
What a switch that is, I tell you. As far back as I can recall, when I’ve had to drop some of the balls we all juggle in life, work, family and everything else, I’d retreat into either books or my online world. Then again, those were usually much shorter periods of time. A few days, a couple of weeks. Never before has it been quite this extended.
But today I’m unleashing my secret weapon against my own apathy & depression: anxiety.
No really. It turns out that if you let anxiety out of the box you’ve been stuffing it into for so many years you find that a good, solid panic attack can do wonders toward getting you back in the game.
I say this because I’m at 1443 unread and working my way down. I’m deleting outright the things that I know don’t need my time… I’m letting myself know that I have to face the music in a lot of cases and that some of the things that fell through the cracks will be unrecoverable. I’m using fear of what happens if I don’t do it nownownow outweigh the wall of apathy that has let me pretend that I’d “start doing things right tomorrow” only to ignore it again.
I’m not sure what that means for this blog, honestly. I really have a lot of stuff I want to write about – just as soon as I take care of the things that I absolutely must address first. But here? I’m not sure. I’ve clearly got some stuff to work out in my life before this ball can definitely be picked up and put back in the ones that I’m keeping in the air right now.
But at the moment, I have to get back to that inbox. Those 1443 unread emails are not going to magically disappear if I don’t. And I want my online life back. So first things first.
If you’re reading this and you’ve emailed me since December 1st? I apologize – expect to hear from me shortly, part of which will include a personal apology. And thanks for bearing with me long enough to read this despite my resounding silence in the other arena.
If you’re reading this and you want to email me? Can you hold off a bit? I promise not to make you listen to nasty, homogenized, crackly hold music if you can’t – but I’m not promising I won’t hum ‘Girl From Ipanema‘ if you insist on hanging on the line.
