Happy Holi!

I love my blog. But unfortunately, it is putting me behind in school. So expect scanter posts for a while (except the ones I've already started on).  

Enjoying something a bit excessively is not always bad. It's  passion. When I was depressed, I always felt sad thinking about my lack of passion. I wanted so bad to feel zest for something. So it's a good thing. But unless I graduate, I can't go on the real adventure I've been waiting for. That of getting a job, living on my own, and volunteering in Nepal!

Nepal is exploding with passion. At hikenepal.com they say,"Few people in the world can celebrate as many festivals as the Nepali people." There are over 50 festivals a year in Nepal. They say Nepal is a land of festivals. 

The Festival of Colors, or Holi, was a couple days ago. To celebrate, everyone takes what I see as a major mental health day. They pelt each other with color, build bonfires, and party. It is the one day of the year where the caste system is reversed, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. This video of a Holi celebration might give you an idea.

It is supposedly a time of getting rid of evil and replacing it with good. A kind of resurrection, in its own way. But instead of painting eggs, they paint each other. Even better.

We all need to do this for ourselves. I mean feel happy, not painting ourselves.

So, I won't be posting a great deal for a while, but in the meantime forget your place on the social hierarchy and be happy. Paint smiley faces on your nails maybe

Happy Holi!
Happy Easter!

Namaste (by in Nepalese)

Haunted Theater Ghost Shoot

“Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, Young Goodman Brown

I'm scared of needles, pickled pigs feet, and friendly people but I ain't afraid of ghosts. Seven ghost hunting vigilantes braved one haunted theater and made two ghost sitings.

The Legacy Theater in Springfield Illinois is purported to be haunted; ask anyone who works there. They will tell you of strange happenings-- flickering lights, falling ladders, inexplicable noises.

You see, in 1955, good ol' Joe Neville, an actor, was overwhelmed with financial difficulties and killed himself the day before he was to perform the lead role. It is said that he still haunts the theater to this day due to his unperformed play.



We took some pictures and guess who showed up? Neville. Believe it. 

But there is more than one ghost that haunts the theater. A monk in brown with an obscured face has been sighted, for instance. In our case, we saw this scary girl ghost...she's been known to haunt the Oak Ridge Cemetery but perhaps she frequents the theater as well...She looks exactly like me, but don't think about that.

Evil lore aside, this was a challenging adventure for a shy girl. I had to organize a bunch of people together, which is a lot harder than it sounds. I felt silly having to change the date of the shoot several times because of schedule conflicts. But you can't let embarrassment get in the way of an adventure.

I had the frightening task of asking people about coming. I was at a church thing and one of my friends, who was in charge (and who would have made a great Lincoln Ghost), asked something like, "Is there anything we can do to support any of you?" 

I decided to be honest "Yeah. Come with me to shoot some ghost pictures," I said. The room was all quite-like. He didn't want me to actually have an answer to that. The stiffness got to me. I felt rude. What if they thought it was dumb?

Then the questions came. Were we actually going to go inside the theater? Someone wanted to know. "Um, no." I said. Was that lame? I kept wondering if that was lame. I wasn't sure we could get in the theater without actually watching a play. Oh great, that meant I probably had to call the theater and find out just in case.

I called the theater and left a message. I hate phone calls. Did I mention I hate phone calls? I hate them. I explained my blog and asked if it would be acceptable for us to take pictures inside.

I was at a movie theater with my brothers and sister-in-law when my cell phone rang. We were playing arcades, waiting for the show to start. I was holding a bag of quarters, watching my fast-fingers sister-in-law win a ten dollar gift card. My heart jumped when I saw the number of the haunted theater on my cell. I dropped my purse and the bag of quarters on the floor. Darting away from the jangle of sounds and lights, I fumbled to answer the phone.

Once again, I explained to the man on the phone about my blog and asked if it would be possible for us to take photos inside the theater. It was harder when someone was on the other end. I felt nervous. "Just act natural," I thought. But I began getting self-conscious and overdoing things. Why was this simple thing so hard for me?

After my long winded explanation, the man said, "We don't do that here. We have respect for our immaterial friends." Gulp. Did that make me prejudice? Against ghosts? "Um," I said, "Well could we take pictures outside?" He replied that we could and his "have fun" sounded a bit sardonic as he hung up.

There are times in my life where I would have blamed myself horribly for this seemingly insignificant experience. I would have cried, felt like a bad person-- maybe a ghost-hater or something. That overreaction is the nature of social anxiety sometimes.

As it was, I had remembered something my therapist had said about just doing whatever I'm going to do and then letting other people deal with it. Their reaction is their decision. If I'm not doing anything wrong and they have a poor reaction, that's just how they are. It doesn't say anything about me. So, I let the negativity pass through me. I did experience it but it didn't become a denizen of my thoughts, really. I told my family about what happened and we laughed about it. That helped.

The day of the ghost shoot, I was nervous all day. My heart raced and my mind reeled. At one point it dawned on me that there was going to be a tomorrow, a day after the shoot. "Huh? What am I going to do then?" I wondered. It was as if I was afraid my soul would be sieved out of my mortal frame by unnatural powers of darkness. The anticipation had been building up for weeks. 

I was met with friendly faces. We traveled to the theater. Ironically,of all the ghost hunting vigilantes, I think I felt the least self-conscious about taking photos. In fact, maybe I was a bit too into it. 

After the photoshoot, we went to Sam's apartment and watched The Woman in Black and ordered pizza. Everyone was really nice and friendly. I think they are really a great bunch of people. And I'm glad I got to hang out with them.

Overall, I know I had my socially awkward moments and my moments that I should have been more confident. I felt embarrassed a few times. But I'm glad I did it. As my therapist has said, "Practice, practice, practice!"

Unlike the harrowing tale of Young Goodman Brown, I found the souls of people to be commendable and ghosts to be merely shadows--only the reflection of my own negative thinking.

Until my next adventure,

Namaste (Bye in Nepalese)

*Special thanks to my brother for photoshopping the images to look amazingly spooky :)

Plant Adventure: Spring Blizzard

Do you remember Wilbert and Eggydoo? They are my pumpkin and my flower that I will be growing. This helps me to be happy and calm since anxiety often is accompanied by depression. Wilbert and Eggydoo won't be able to start growing just yet as a snow flurry has covered the ground.

But that doesn't keep Wilbert and Eggydoo down. Check out this snowman they built.














We're not all done growing yet, but we can still have fun while we wait to improve.

Keep following Wilbert and Eggydoo to see if I end up accidentally killing them!

Until next time,

Namaste (bye in Nepalese)

Social Anxiety Sucks

I know I've been trying to be positive, but I just want to be clear on one thing: social anxiety sucks. It's not synonymous with simply being shy or quiet. It may be agonizing. People have a basic need for social interaction. Those of us with social anxiety have this need as much as the most outgoing person you know. We don't just have the need for social interaction, we feel this need acutely. It's not that we don't want a social life. Often we crave that feeling of connecting with other human beings, but do not know how to attain it. Why? Are we robots?

Well, in my case, I had negative social experiences from a very young age. I started out just like anyone else. I would love interacting and  making friends. But I started school a year early and that meant I was smaller and less experienced than the other kids, and that meant an easy target. But after being consistently picked on and rejected, I isolated myself to protect myself. I kept to myself and hardly talked to anyone. At lunch, I often sat by myself or with the special needs kids. 

When I went to college, it was almost as if I had been in suspended animation for all those years and I had to learn how to socialize from the ground up.

I would often feel like I was watching the world around me from behind glass. I could see it. But it wasn't mine. I hardly existed to anyone but my closest friends. It stung. There wasn't much I could do about it.

I found another blog on social anxiety that states, 

"In recent years, studies have demonstrated a link between social anxiety and depression, for example, which had not previously been known to exist. It is not, however, surprising that many individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder should feel sad and even depressed, given the high levels of stress and anxiety that they are forced to cope with on a daily basis."

It sucks, guys. 

But I'm still going to go on lots of adventures. 

Namaste.
 

Rumination: The Infinite Labyrinth of a Stubbornly Anxious Mind

"The house seemed infinite and expanding. The house is not this large, he thought. Other things are making it seem larger: the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors, so many years, my unfamiliarity, the loneliness." 

--"Death and the Compass" by Jorge Luis Borges

An article in Psychology Today states that "Rumination refers to the tendency to repetitively think about the causes, situational factors, and consequences of one's negative emotional experience." Do you ever do this? Rumination greatly contributes to anxiety.

It has been compared to a hamster wheel spinning and spinning in one place. It's been seen like a broken record player repeating the same phrase as one goes over the negative experience again and again. But the way I experience it, it is more of a maze; A labyrinth, if you will, straight out of Borges.

Borges is an Argentinean writer who often explores the concept of infinity. While this concept potentially seems God-like (see "Pascal's Sphere"), it is also associated with death and madness in many of Borges's stories. In "Death and the Compass," a seemingly infinite house leads a detective to his death.

Although Borges did not intend this, the labyrinth presented in this story to the detective, Lonnrot,reminds me of my own negative ruminations. I weave through the same scenario again and again, looking at it from different angles. I'm like Lonnrot exploring the infinite house. He felt he was exploring a mysterious new place, yet it was so symmetrical that he "grew tired of opening or half opening windows which revealed outside the same desolate garden from various heights and various angels." 

I try to solve my troubling experience as if it is a puzzle, but I get nowhere. It's like following clues toward a destination, finding the destination to be infinite and then becoming destroyed by my pursuit of said destination.

Just the other day, I was ruminating about my silly piggy bank craft I posted. "I stuck a bunch of stickers on a lemonade jar," I thought. Lame. And then I thought it again. And then I contemplated a variation of that thought. Then I came up with another thought that built on that variation of that thought. I took that into another context. Then I imagined it from the perspective of someone else. Then I went back and thought of the first thought I thought. Then I felt depressed. 

It didn't help that other hard things happened that day that already made me feel depressed. I was afraid someone in my family was going to be laid off. Someone else I loved was having one of the hardest days in their life.

But eventually, I escaped the labyrinth. The way I got out?  I just quit exploring it. The only way I could manage that was to go to sleep, wake up early, and engage in a busy day that left little room for mazes. Among other things, I went and visited my family member who was going through such a hard time. We talked, watched a movie, had ice cream. I straightened up the place so he would feel more comfortable and inclined toward peace. I put some flowers on the table. Seeing his mood improve made my piggy bank craft maze become infinitesimal. That post was the last thing I thought about. Sometimes, reaching out to someone is the surest way out of our mental mazes that seem infinite and large.

Let yourself feel peace. Get out of your labyrinth of self-deprecation and go on a real adventure. There is so much more beauty to explore in this vast world. Find it.

Namaste

Money Bank Craft for Adventuring

 A Country Time Lemonade jar seems like just the thing for creating a piggy bank for my funds.

Just take off the label and get some fun wrapping paper or scrapbook paper. Those long scrapbook border stickers are the right length to go around the entire jar. Or you can use some brightly colored ribbon.

Use a round object, such as a paper cup, to trace a circle onto the scrapbook paper. The circle should be approximately the same size of the inner ring of the lid. Cut this out and glue it to the top of the lid. Then just stick on some stickers!Easy peasy.

Or... Turn it into a pig with some foam ears, some googly eyes, and a pipe-cleaner.

One Napalese Rupee = 1 cent

Namaste

Plant Adventure

Anxiety often comes hand in hand with depression. Depression involves a lot of nothing. 

So, doing something that nourishes yourself can be an adventure in its own right. And one way to do that is to grow something!

 Meet Wilbert:

 


 

 And Eggydoo:

Wilbert and Eggydoo:

Aren't they cute? They're kind of like people with social anxiety or depression. Because what you can't readily see is that there is a real pumpkin and a real flower inside of these! You crack them open, add water, give them plenty of sunlight and viola! You're ready to transfer them outside.

That's what I feel like my therapist did for me. I felt like a big fat clod of dirt surrounded in darkness. He had to crack me open, because I was a bit closed off at first. That was the scary part. Then he gave me a lot of help and nourishment and I have grown a lot already.

I feel more prepared to open up and blossom out into the brave, wide world. I never thought I had a real plant underneath all this dust. That's what people with anxiety don't get sometimes. Just because it looks like a lump of dirt, doesn't mean there's nothing substantial there. When the lump of dirt is taken care of, it can become something.
 
Now, you must know, I do not have a green thumb. And this is the first time I have attempted to grow anything by myself.

The pressure's on. Will they live? Or die? Follow me throughout spring and summer to see what will become of Wilbert and Eggydoo. I will need to wait until it is warmer to plant them.

Aww, what a happy family. I hope I will not kill them :P.

Until my next adventure,

Namaste (bye in Nepalese)

~~~

“At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden  

"And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden  

Feeling Anxious? Some Calming Tricks from a Fellow Adventurer

Here are some tricks that I have learned and am practicing for when I'm feeling anxious on my escapades.

* Do not focus on doing it "right." Just try to feel comfortable.

        My therapist suggested this to me. One time, when a bunch of beauty school students were watching this scary lady highlight my hair (it was free!) I focused on this. I did not have to impress these people. I just had to feel relaxed. I concentrated on this instead of on how I was doing socially. I focused on taking deep breaths that sooth a rapid heart. One of the beauty school girls, who had amazing hair, said she wished she could be like me. She said she always talked too much. But I was so graceful and just observed what was happening around me. I laughed inwardly.

* Let it be what it is.

     Meditation embodies this attitude and is calming for many people. A yoga instructor once advised me, during meditation, to free the mind of thoughts. She said, "if a thought enters your head, observe it, notice that it is there, and then let it go." One does not have to meditate, per se, to embrace this attitude. But it is an important mindset for battling anxiety. People with anxiety or depression often do something called rumination. It is when they obsess over events in their lives to the point that they are engulfed in discomfort and misery. They play them back again and again instead of moving on. Let what you have done or said be, and then let it go. It is what it is. Move on to the next thing.

* Live in the sanctuary of the present.

        This is what a yoga DVD told me :P (if you haven't noticed I do yoga). But for you non-yogis I will say, don't let the past be the gravedigger of your present, as the philosopher Nietzsche advised. The past is gone, give yourself a sanctuary from the stress thinking of the past gives you. And furthermore, don't worry about what has not happened yet. Live in the sanctuary of the present. There are relaxation exercises that I will post a link to at the bottom of the page that may help clear your thoughts so that you may live in the present.

 
*Do something that is outside of your comfort zone.
   
    This is anti-intuitive, but as you familiarize yourself more with what frightens you, you will feel less anxiety toward it. What you're scared of is not bad. It's just something you need to get used to. Expose yourself to it.

 

* Fail now and then.

    It's okay to fail. Fail a lot. Expect to fail at times. It is often a necessary step that precedes improvement. You will likely not improve unless you fail. Once you improve, no one will think about those failures, they will just see where you are now. It's worth it.

 
*If you couldn't do it today, maybe you'll be able to do it tomorrow.

    This is pretty simple. When you do fail, you always have tomorrow. Just keep at it. My therapist shared this video with me of a truly inspirational person. This is where I got this idea from.

Here is a link to some great relaxation mp3s. If you want to feel less anxiety, you need to learn what it feels like to be relaxed and be able to relax yourself, like I did when the beauty school students were watching my hair get highlighted. I'm still working on feeling more relaxed too. It's a work in progress. But these relaxation mp3s are very helpful.

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~healthed/relax/downloads.html

Also, if you have social anxiety like me, here is a great forum. Meet friends who get your struggles and discuss solutions. It's pretty cool.

http://www.anxietysocialnet.com/

And for the heck of it, my favorite yoga instructor on meditation.

Namaste

Of Guinea Pigs and Girls

I went on the most terrifying adventure the other day that only the most daring adventurer would attempt, the perils of which are too horrifying to speak of.

Okay, I'll tell you. I telephoned my professor. 

He wanted me to contact him.

When you have social anxiety stupid things like this are adventures. Just trust me.

It wasn't exactly a chapter out of Of Mice and Men, as if I had to make a difficult ethical decision. But I rang my hands over it. It scared me. I had been putting it off for a few weeks. I reacted like a frightened guinea pig, who wants to hide in a dark space. My heart raced as I picked up the phone. I dialed the number. I heard a friendly, "Hello?" He had a class to go to though. So I'm not sure what he wanted to talk about. He said he would call back.

My professor is super nice. Being afraid of him is like being afraid of a little girl, holding a puppy, who is trying to give you a million dollars. 

He's been complimentary toward my schoolwork and I've been afraid of disappointing him. 

This was hard to do. This blog motivated me though :) So I want to say thank you so much to my readers.

This has been one of those everyday adventures that those of us with social anxiety face. More challenging and crazy adventures to come.

So, are you a guinea pig or a girl?

Toilet kata cha? (Where's the toilet in Napalese)

Let it Shine, Let it Shine, Let it Shine!

Other cultures are my favorite!  The Lantern Festival marks the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. They light beautiful lanterns and solve riddles. 

 My best friend invited me to UIS's own version of the Lantern Festival, put on by the Asian Club. Social anxiety, however, is its own riddle. For a shy girl, even something like this may be difficult. You might end up feeling like you are watching all the fun from the outside. And even when people attempt to reach out to you, you screw it up. 

Well, it sounded fun to me, but I did not realize what a blast it was going to be.

 
There weren't masses of lanterns that filled the night sky like there are in China. Yet the room was, as if through a Chinese lantern, full of a happy glow which seemed to seep through a razzle-dazzle film of color on faces all around. 

This adventure turned out to be full of laughs and wonder, while my anxiety remained under control. I even won three plates of delicious dumplings!

 That night, as I reflected, I realized to what extent therapy had paid off. I thanked Heavenly Father over and over that I was simply able to be around other people and see their smiles, without feeling afraid.

I felt almost how I felt when I was a kid. Before I developed pretty bad anxiety.

The sad thing about people with social anxiety is that some of us can remember a time when we didn't have it. When we called out to a neighbor across the street, when we ran through the house screaming, dressed in a super hero costume. Like this one Halloween when I dressed as a sunbeam.

Lights among riddles. It seems people all around the world want that light, that something, that helps us solve the enigmas that stall love and happiness.

The African Children's choir, to me, is infused with this love and happiness. If you listen to these cutie pies, think about the fact that you still have that sweet, soulful light you had when you were a child. You just have to let it shine.

Zai jian (goodbye in Mandarin Chinese)
Ar tufat (goodbye in Berber, an African dialect)
and
Namaste  (goodbye in Napalese)

Monkey Balloon Adventure: A Portrait of Social Anxiety

So, I somehow convinced myself that this was going to be a good idea. Everyone reassured me that it was a fine idea when I explained it, so I felt okay about it. Here is a graphic representation of what I envisioned along with a poem that inspired me.

This is how I saw it. A great time, framed by this whimsical poem of spring.

The idea was that I would buy a balloon and give it away. I imagined that I would be a little awkward like Cummings's balloon man, but I would make people happy. That's not quite how it went.

First, I went to the party store. I picked out a big monkey balloon. A big monkey balloon. I tied it to a hair band around my wrist. I drove to a store I was not accustomed to. I felt lost as I wandered through the aisles looking for someone to give the balloon to. 

I felt like people were staring at me because I was carrying a giant monkey balloon. They were. I knew I should look them in the eye and smile. I think they were grinning at me. But I started feeling self conscious. Where was my inner extrovert when I needed it?! "Square your back, chin up, don't look at the floor," I told myself. And just then I saw a mom with a toddler.

I approached my "prey." I asked the mother if she wanted a balloon. Her eyes widened. She looked flustered. I freaked out."Oh, no. Oh, no. What does she think is wrong with me? Oh, no. Oh crap,"  Uncertainty crept through my spine like seeping, black, fog. That made her feel even less sure. As I drew the balloon toward her, she tensed. Okay, this was stupid. "Well," I said, "he's probably too young"

"Yeah, too young... I was going to say," she responded. I walked off. AGH! Why did I decide to walk around Wal-Mart with a giant monkey balloon? Could I please explain that to myself again? How did this seem like a great idea? I felt like a big, stupid, clown. It was as if the monkey was screaming, "Idiot! Idiot!Idiot!"

I hid in the toy isles and pretended to look at some Batman action figures. I felt a burning in the back of my eyes. Was I going to cry? "Dear Heavenly Father," I prayed, "Please do not let me cry in Wal-Mart while holding a monkey balloon."

I emerged into a clearing of children's clothes. I passed some people who stared at monkey and me. I felt ashamed. I had to get rid of this horrible, smiling, banana munching anathema of evil. A girl of perhaps three or four and her mother were picking out clothes. They had their backs to me. Great, now I had to get their attention.

"Um," I stammered, "excuse me." They turned around. "Um, I was buying balloons for a friend" a partial lie, only a partial lie, "and I had this extra balloon" that was true, "and I'm trying to give it away." She looked slightly confused. "So, um, do you want it?"

Ahh! This awkwardness surpassed Napoleon Dynamite! "Sure," she said politely. Turning to her daughter, "It's your birthday next week anyway, isn't it?" 

The little girl happened to be wearing a monkey hat. "It matches your hat," I said. She smiled as I transferred the burden from my wrist to hers. I felt like Frodo finally dropping the ring into the volcano. I turned to go. "Thank you!" the mom said.

When I got to my car, I felt like the most giant loser on the planet. What had I been thinking? "Stupid,stupid, stupid!" I told myself. I suppose, in feeling these things, I was doing what my therapist, Dr. Headman, tells me I often do. I was figuratively sticking an ice pick into my leg and twisting it all around. I didn't actually do anything wrong. In a sense, it happened a bit like I had imagined, but with minor setbacks that I blew out of proportion. I gave a little girl, who obviously loved monkeys, a giant monkey balloon a week before her birthday. 'nough said.

Sometimes, people think that shy people are snobs and that's why they don't interact more. A cool, quirky girl wrote a blog entry that discusses how this is usually not true.

http://www.aquirkygirl.com/2011/03/life-as-shy-girl.html

In the case of people with anxiety, it's not that they don't like people or don't want to have positive interactions with them. It's not that they don't want to make friends. It's that it's hard for them. They may feel foolish, as if they're carrying around a giant monkey balloon and are inevitably going to elicit rejection.

Until my next awkward adventure,

Namaste (bye in Napalese)

The Past is Prologue, the Future is a Mystery: My Plan to Volunteer in Nepal

This shy girl has admittedly already been on a few adventures besides therapy and nail painting. You know, like shredding some powder on my snowboard (i.e. falling on my bum on the bunny hills), accidentally starting a grease fire in my parents' kitchen, babysitting little boys, 

and hiking this active volcano in Guatemala.

But to go on a few adventures does not make me an adventurer. Am I right? So...I think it's time to embark on a whole new adventure. A big adventure!

That's why I'm going to...(Are you ready for this? Are you ready?)...volunteer abroad in Nepal! I'm going to help out in an orphanage for two months via United Planet's volunteer abroad program. That's the goal. While I'm there I'll have the opportunity to learn the language, dance a Napalese dance, see Mt. Everest, and view the sights, including the Monkey Temple!

 

Here's a link if you want to check out volunteering opportunities all over the globe. 

http://www.unitedplanet.org/volunteer-in-nepal





But, I can't just go to Nepal right away. That would be like taking the "how it should have ended" route to the end of the LOTR trilogy.

Or like Bilbo fighting Smaug in the first chapter before he does all that other stuff. There are still a number of adventures I will have to face before I can even think about Nepal. For instance, 

* graduation (IN MAY!CAN'T WAIT!).
* getting a job
* saving up at least $5,000 for the trip. 
* The cherry on top, I'll be getting my very first, very own apartment!

For people with severe anxiety, these can be quite daring ordeals. 

But I'm not going to simply settle for these mundane, albeit substantial, adventures. I will discuss my every day adventures that social anxiety incites. But also, along the way, I will go on some crazy, fun adventures just for the heck of it, that test my (very small) comfort zone.

Until my next adventure, 

Namaste (goodbye in Napalese).

Adventure One: Setting Sail

My first adventure was therapy. Stepping into that vacuous little office--an island split from whirring reality-- the white sound machine cut off auditory stimuli beyond my present space. The great black couch was void except for a tissue box. Its patterned carton was like a skull of one of those brave few who had passed through before me; unable to fend their own demons, they had cowered weakly to allow their minds to be infiltrated. 

I was embarking into frightening terrain. A seesawing feeling came over me as I sat on the couch, which engulfed me in black leather. My feet were groundless, dangling off its high seat. But, no. I was not merely on an island. Like Jim Hawkins in Treasure Island, who hid in a barrel of apples aboard a pirate ship, I had entered a moving vessel where I was hiding amid peril. I realized this as I began to fill out a quiz to find what was wrong with me. Low self-esteem, social anxiety, depression, did I dare say occasional thoughts of suicide? The real feat was yet to come. An expedition into my fear.

I have had anxiety for most of my life that has inhibited me greatly.

My family loves me, but this has tested their own sanity.

 It was becoming too much. 

That was before I started therapy a few months ago. It turns out, after you venture out of the apple barrel and fight a few scurvy pirates, you get a butt-load of gold. My therapist pulled me out of the muck. If you know anyone who needs therapy, he is just amazing. http://www.drheadman.com/

With my last semester of my undergraduate degree underway, I'm ready for much more daring enterprises that challenge me. I hope to chronicle these adventures here in this blog as I face my sundry fears-- As I succeed; As I fail; As I sail into living. 


My first adventure since therapy? Facing my fear--of fingernail art.












http://www.thedaintysquid.com/2011/09/nail-tutorial-strawberry-nails.html

Don't be afraid to not be perfect.