To Admire
Compiled by Erica Allen, college student from central Kentucky.To calm myself on busy nights at the restaurant
It’s crazy on Friday and Saturday nights, and even though I’m likely to come home with a wad of cash, I’d prefer a more steady pace.
When I first started working at SG, Friday and Saturday nights were absolutely overwhelming. Now, there’s something I keep in mind to get me through.
When I start to stress, panic, and feel myself being pulled in opposing directions, I blink, take full account of the amount of negative space in the room, and realize that, once we’re at our busiest, at our maximum seating capacity, it’s not gonna get any worse. It really can only get easier! And not just that—it’s such a relief to realize that the chaos is contained. It’s a relief knowing that, nearly every day I work I pull out the tables, take down chairs, and add salts, peppers, and flowers to each—and that same simple, blessedly limited structure is still in place, underneath the hundred bodies and many plates that presently weigh them down.
And that negative space! The ceiling is fairly high. In the middle of such chaos, the negative space above everyone is unchanging.
Oh shit.
Is god the negative space in the crowded restaurant of life?
and
how can i apply this to how I cope with day to day struggles?
i guess one of the weirdest aspects of depression and depressive episodes, for me, is that i totally lose any sense of being interested in or even liking or knowing anything about any subject at all. i dissolve from my personality completely, and am overwhelmed by the dynamism and activity of everyone else.
I’m an INFP.
I also have just learned that INFP-ers are overly represented in the populations of people suffering from depression and people with ADD. Curious!
What is your Myers-Briggs personality type?
How accurate and/or useful do you consider knowing your type to be?
This is a love story.
It’s about our friends Mark and Giulia and the courageous journey they took through and out of the dark, steep path of mental illness. I think like most of their friends, we never could have imagined that the always smiling, full of energy Giulia that we had grown to love during our time in San Francisco could be going through this. It felt so sudden. So unexpected. I remember getting the email from Mark that Giulia had been hospitalized and I must have read it a dozen times. I just couldn’t comprehend what they were going through and I didn’t know what to do or what to say.
Months went by and we only got to see the outermost layer of the battle Mark and Giulia were fighting. Eventually, as Giulia began to find her way through, they did something drastic. They put their lives on hold and went on an around the world trip. We all followed their journey on twitter and their blog. I saw photos of my sweet friend with her hair whipping across her glowing cheeks, that familiar smile returning to her face.
So often in marriage, when the true test of commitment to a spouse is tested, things fall apart. I can thing of few things as devastating as losing a bright, witty, charming wife to the black hole of mental illness - to have her there physically but somewhere far away mentally.
But Mark fought. and Giulia fought. and they found their way back. Their journey is more heroic than all the fairytales and story books ever written. It’s love. at its best and worst. and it deserves to be shared.
Love,
M
Agh. This made me tear up some. My depressive thinking and anxiety make me, uh… worry, worry a lot about what sort of partner I will be in the future. What sort of partner I am now.
I wish this video had shared more.
I can’t help but notice their own privilege in how they were able to cope with the mental illness—leaving jobs to sail around the world? I mean, shew. BUT.
I worry that some day I will get really, really bad off, and this video offers me a shred of hope that we can make it through okay.
After that period, I thought things could not get more scary than the constant gnawing fear that I was not doing what I was made to do. Sadly, this assumption was false. I was absent the day that the “nothing is more terrifying than success” memo got passed out. Or maybe that memo never got distributed because no one wanted to be the asshole that said, “I got what I wanted, and it’s scary as shit.” So, f*ck it. I’m going to come out and say it because I would have felt a hell of a lot less alone this year, had I known.
I’m telling you, you must read this post by founder of APW Meg Keene, who has just wrapped up her first year as a full-time small business owner (of APW), who just published a book, and who is planning a book tour as we speak.
And let’s talk about this quote. Sometimes this idea that success is actually very terrifying/stimulates even more ridiculous personal growth/etc etc etc is thrilling. Sometimes, when I am depressed—which I keep bumping into these recent evenings—this idea makes me want to… oh yes, curl into my bed paralyzed with despair. Sure of failure. Praying for failure. Sick in my gut of the expectations and needs of others left unfulfilled.
I went through large parts of my twenties consumed with worry that I wouldn’t make something of myself, that I wouldn’t live up to my own internal standard of success. I have something inside me, wound up like a spring, that won’t let me stop until I’m creating something and putting it out into the world.
I’m glad that I was trained with the idea that you show up Every Single Day (we were only allowed three absences in studio per semester), no matter how sh*tty or uncreative you were feeling, and you do the work. You do the work when what you’re doing sucks, you do the work when what you are doing seems brilliant, you do the work when you’d rather be in bed. And thank God, because that takes some serious pressure off. You just have to show up and work, not show up and do brilliant work. So every day these days, I show up. I write stuff. I send emails. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it’s brilliant. But I’m glad I know that I have to do it every day.
Meg Keene on A Practical Wedding: “Working For Yourself: Month One”
For me, this was what absolutely killed my academics last year—depression and a long perfectionist streak and, oh boy, I felt/feel enormous pressure to do something amazingly right OR curl up in bed in paralyzing despair.
Ratios
At the College of the Atlantic, there are 3 guidance counselors for a student body of 364.
At Centre, there are 2 guidance counselors for a student body of 1,241.
1:121 or 1:620; I think it will make a difference.
very real concerns
1. student debt -> delayed home-buying -> delayed babymaking
2. not being able to get health insurance. either due to no job benefits, and/or pre-existing health conditions
ain’t life just grand?
