One concept that I really like is the idea of microactions, which are tiny actions that aren’t even big enough to be considered “steps” to achieving a goal. They can be useful when you’re feeling like I was when I wrote my last post, as if everything is too much work and far too complicated.

The article Inch by Inch: Microactions by Mary LoVerde has a good overview:

Microactions are teeny tiny steps that propel us forward without threatening our sense of control. They get around our fears because we commit to something so little we could hardly be afraid and we’re guaranteed success. They’re much smaller than steps and often so ridiculous that we outfox our resistance to change.

Sometimes, when you do a microaction, it provides you with so much momentum that you actually find yourself achieving a goal, or at least taking a couple of steps toward doing so. The example in the article is of a woman whose microaction was to put on exercise clothes, and she felt silly standing around in exercise clothes and figured she might as well go for a walk. You can’t go into it expecting that to happen, though, because then you might be too freaked out to even take a microaction since you feel like you’d have to immediately follow it up with a bunch of other stuff you’re too tired to do, or you just do the microaction and feel disappointed in yourself for not accomplishing anything big. Sometimes you will accomplish something bigger, sometimes you’ll acclimatize yourself to a certain microaction so that it becomes part of your routine and it won’t take so much effort in the future, and sometimes you’ll only manage to do one tiny, little thing, and that might be the only thing that you do all day.

And sometimes that’s okay, because doing something is better than doing nothing.

A bit of looking around online shows me that Mary LoVerde is the author of Stop Screaming at the Microwave! : How to Connect Your Disconnected Life. I have always thought that was the best title for a self-help book that I’ve ever heard. I don’t know if I’d actually find the book itself helpful if I ever read it, but I can tell you that every time I see it in a store, I feel a bit better, because the title makes me giggle. Stop screaming at the microwave! Hee hee hee.

On a slightly related note, just in case you don’t understand how much of a dork I am, whenever I write a to-do list, the first item on it is always “Write to-do list.” That means there’s always something I can cross off right away, and it makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something.

Things I wanted to do tonight: Heat up frozen mini-pizzas and eat them, take a shower, do two loads of laundry, write a long blog post, pack my bags for the long weekend. This doesn’t sound too hard, does it?

Things I managed to do tonight: Eat Lunchmates (using the oven and washing dishes seemed way too complex), do one load of laundry, start writing a blog post, get distracted in the middle of it because I’m trying to find a certain envelope that had stuff written on it, wander around looking for the envelope, get really frustrated that I can’t find it, think I should clean the bedroom but I don’t want to, sit back down and try to write the blog post but instead find myself rocking back and forth. I’ll pack in the morning. I’ll shower tomorrow night. No, I’ll take a bath tomorrow night. You don’t even have to stand up to do that. Scrap the blog post that was supposed to be long and semi-meaningful, and start writing this one instead.

I hate that sometimes, even when I’m not particularly depressed or hypomanic, I still can’t do things that everybody else can do. I mean I literally can’t do them. At work, I am always organized, often hyperfocused, and have no problem multitasking. In the rest of my life, though, the simplest tasks frequently seem unbearably complex. Tonight the thought of washing my hair or turning on the oven made me want to crumple into a little heap. I’m not even sad. I’m not even tired. I’m not having particularly intrusive racing thoughts. I’m not just being lazy, either. Trust me — I’m lazy frequently enough to know when I’m being lazy! I’ve got plenty of experience in that area.

I’m not always like this. Just far more often than I’d like to be.

It had been a long time since I checked out the artwork at explodingdog, but I went there last night, and I’ve felt just like this little guy so many times in the past that when I saw him, I almost cried.

Hey, student nurse. Yes, you, the girl who recently did a rotation on a psychiatric ward. I don’t think that while you are riding on the bus, you are supposed to be telling detailed stories to your friend about the patients in the hospital. You know everybody else around you on the bus can hear you, too, right? But you don’t care at all, do you? Of course not. Most mental health workers I’ve seen don’t give a damn about patient confidentiality, so why should you be any different, student nurse? I bet you think that since you didn’t mention any names, everything is cool, right? Well, guess what. It’s not. By the way, those were human beings you were poking fun at. I understand that dark humour has a place among health care workers, to help them cope with the things they have to deal with in their work. That place is not on the bus, however.

Hey, guy from the bus a month or two ago. I overheard you when you were saying, “It seems like everybody I grew up with is dying. One guy died of a drug overdose. Another friend of mine killed herself in jail in Ontario.”

I wanted to say, “You were friends with Ashley Smith? Man, I’m so sorry about what happened to her.”

But, of course, I didn’t say anything.