I had been sleeping great for weeks then bam – the last two nights have been all: toss, turn, doze, wake up, reach for iPhone, then watch the sun come up.
I know that as wide awake as I feel right now, when it’s time to actually get out of bed I will be inexplicably sleepy and not ready to start the day.
Ironic little thing, this insomnia.
There’s a bit of panic because I’ve been spacey and tired during the day. I can always do my job because people in need are compelling enough to keep me focused, but I’m sloooow when it comes to paperwork and filler. I can just sit in my back office and stare into space for hours, happy as a clam.
I’m also in one of my “creative phases” aka I’m hypomanic. That’s when I vigorously recommit to hobbies, art, home decor, gardening – you name it. I used to get full-on crazy and would have a ton of physical energy. I could deep clean my entire house from top to bottom, rearranging every drawer and shine all the silver – in a single weekend.
Now my brain gets going but my body poops out. I can’t always execute all my bright ideas like I used to, so stuff just swims around in my head until I can find a way to make it happen IRL. Or until I forget about it.
I have figured out that I need to review my Tues/Thurs Spanish sessions with Eze. He is a linguistics wizard in his twenties and can name and execute every part of speech perfectly, which is hard because I never got much past subjects and predicates and nouns and verbs. If it wasn’t a part of Schoolhouse Rock it didn’t exist, or stick with me. Conjunction junction anyone? Schoolhouse Rock made us all a little bit smart if we could nust remember a few lyrics.
I need to set aside a little time Tuesday and Thursday nights to review my zoom notes. Yesterday we did something Eze called “the family links”. Like a golf course, but with people and complicated relationships.
This was not an exercise for sissies, I’ll tell you that. (My brain just made a pun so I’m leaving it even though sissy is a word that could land me in gender jail or gay prison). Sister/sissy get it? Ha,ha – just enjoy it please.
We flew right past the nuclear family and then things got cookin’. It’s important to learn what’s relevant so we explored terms like step-father, ex-husband, and crazy uncle once removed. There are many family links and we stopped just short of “squatter I’m trying to evict” and “single guy who always comes to Thanksgiving and eats all the cheese dip”
I started off my lesson crying. Yo lloré por many reasons. First I had tried to look at a conjugation chart for the verb “ir” the night before and it broke me. I’ll never learn this damn language!
My mom who’s good with languages and is mastering Italian in her 80’s suggested I just stick with the present tense for the time being.
If only.
Eze is incapable of staying in the present. He’s all over the map tense-wise but I think the tears moved him because he decided to let me just do some present conjugations and the family links.
He also told me that crying is healthy. I’m glad he thinks so because I’ve got more where that came from.
All of my various teachers usually think I’m a hoot….until I start with the crying. I am a marvelous student until things get hard, and then I crumble and weep.
Sometimes I try and abruptly end the lesson, stating that I simply can not go on. “My brain is scrambled,”I say. “Just try this next exercise,” they say.
“I can’t”, I say.
“Yes you can,” they say. They are paid to say that. I am literally paying someone to argue with me. 😆
Ok, fine. I can….kind of. Dammit to hell.
I get this way about many things: music theory, physics, whether to use para or por….some things just make my head spin.
The theory of relativity makes my head just about explode. I’m kind of no way about some things. The teachers say way and I have to try and accept that which I feel in the moment I can not accept, much less learn.
Like when my ex-fiddle teacher Jan got all into the circle of eighths. You can just eff right off with that nonsense. I believe it was that attitude and the crying that got me nixed from his teaching schedule when he decided to pare down his lessons and release a record. (AJ Lee & Blue Summit – awesome band, and I wasn’t ready to tackle the circle of eighths anyway so fair is fair)
When I’m hypomanic (I actually prefer to think of it as being in an expansive state) I think I can do just about anything. And that’s partially true. I can start most things because I am an excellent beginner.
But part of this recent big mood of mine is a wish to go deeper and get better. I’m gunning for mastery this time around.
I just found a strings teacher down the street from my office who fixed me up with a bass ukelele tuned like a violin. How groovy is that???
I asked him about the cool tuning thing and he casually asked me if I knew John Blasquez. WAT???? Why yes he was my first adult violin teacher!!! Well John invented this uke thing and it’s the bomb.
I’m not sure John will ever talk to me again though because I was super cray in my Blasquez days. I had my third baby and was marching towards a divorce. I cried a lot. Especially when he took away my tablature and made me read music.
(Incidentally I also cried when my first Manning Music teacher informed me there would be no sheet music, as I would be learning by ear)
(And I teared up and said some swears later when my next Manning teacher -Jan- suddenly started calling the places I put my fingers by the names of the notes – wtf – I thought we were over that. )
So John basically had it rough and if there was a restraining order for ex-students he’d probably slap one on me.
I’m telling you though, 2022 is going to be my year of mastery. There will be movement. Progress will be made.
I’m a crier, but it’s gotten way better. Menopause took away my monthly emotional breakdowns, and lexapro keeps me from bursting into tears every time I see a kitten.
I was driving home from work yesterday crying because my dog Garth is now middle aged (pre-mourning his demise) and then I remembered that I’d run out of my lexapro a few days ago.
Bingo.
I’m not depressed, but if I don’t take my lexapro I cry buckets. I could worry that I must be repressing all kinds of demons if a mere three days off my meds turns on the waterworks like this. I could worry a lot about that but I’ve got insurance and it’s easier to go to Walgreens, grab my Rx and swallow all my emotions in one tiny little pill.
I’m being funny/not funny. I care/don’t care.
What I really want and care about is to play music and speak Spanish and write blog posts in between taking care of patients, tending my garden and feeding my dogs and the pig. And I want to read. And throw some pots.
And to do all that I’ll need some better sleep.
And now, we have come full circle and it’s time to get up. I may not have fallen back to sleep but I wrote this masterpiece.
So, silver lining, there ya go.
Fuzzy Monkey 