Is it possible to feel overwhelmed and motivated at the same time?

That's about where I am, right at this minute.

Where should I even start, O internetz?

I guess I could start by telling you about the end of my summer, and the transition that Bellingham autumns always bring. This summer was the first time since probably the END OF HIGH SCHOOL that I had something approximating an actual "SUMMER BREAK OMGELLEVENTYONE!" I wasn't working full time, even with my two jobs. I wasn't taking summer classes. I have very little to show for this summer, despite all my grand plans of gardening and canning and baking pies and picking blackberries and swimming in my favorite lake. My garden turned into an overgrown tomato plot, and that's pretty much all that grew there besides the BIGGEST thistle I have ever seen (I am scared to pull it out because I know that shit is gonna go right through my gloves) and the huge bush that John named "THE BEE BUSH" because it always has hordes of angry bees buzzing around it. We argued about mowing the lawn all summer, mainly because we didn't have a working lawnmower for most of it, and that involved imposing on my friend Barbara quite a bit, picking up her lawnmower and using it and driving it back to her house. I hand tilled the garden space, and planned to uproot THE BEE BUSH and extend the garden, but that never happened. I got busy, I got broke, it became a priority I didn't want to expend the effort on because I knew that no matter how hard I worked I wouldn't be able to afford to build it up to what I wanted. And then, O internetz, I felt guilty for not following through on my plan and letting the tomatoes I planted there just kind of flounder. Well, they had other plans, and the weird weather produced some spectacular tomatoes. But they didn't ripen on the vine, so I had to pick them all green. And now they're ripening, but some went from green to rotten in a day. I don't know. I don't understand, either. I have two boxes full that are about ready to cut up and use in stuff, so tonight the plan is to cut them up into chunks, stew them, and can the shit out of them to use them later. I don't know what else to do with them, and I apparently have some time on my hands tonight since John is super sick and I can't interact with him like I would like to, for fear of contracting whatever dread disease he managed to bring into our house. Where was I? Oh yes! The end of summer! I only went swimming once this summer, with Chase and Ryan and Katy over at Blodel Donovan park. I took Biggs and Noel. Bigby is the best dog to take swimming, by far. He is chill, he is happy to be in the water or out of it, he doesn't cry, and he doesn't panic. He just calmly paddles around, usually beelining for the small children because they're his favorite to lick and chase around the lake. I didn't knit or sew as much as I wanted to, mainly because I didn't have the motivation to.

I spent most of my summer being scared, to be honest. And, you know what, internetz? now that we're being honest, I feel that I should tell you that I amassed an enormous amount of guilt about not accomplishing anything over the summer. I had all these plans, and none of them really worked out, and it was mainly because I just didn't have the follow through. Last school year, particularly the last quarter of it, was just so hard, and I was so wiped out, that I didn't want to spend the only few months of being class free that I knew I was likely to have in the next 3 years and spend it being my usual productive self. I was so scared to start my classes at Western. I was scared of big girl school, scared of what I was going to have to do and what would be required of me, scared that nothing I did would turn out, come Fall.

In the vein of being completely honest, internetz, I kind of created a self fulfilling prophecy. I was so terrified of the change that was coming that I didn't prepare enough for it early in the summer. I waited, and thought "Oh, I'll do that 'later' whenever 'later' may be" and due to the constant back burner stockpiling of important school stuff (combined with a pretty serious but honestly made misunderstanding on my part) I was not able to register for the classes I needed, when I needed them. This resulted in spending the last part of my summer fighting the school for the classes I needed to get into, and set me up to start my relationship with Western in a very adversarial tone. I would like to report that I got it all worked out and that I'm super happy there now, but it's just not the case.

I feel really out of place there. I feel like, so far at Western, I haven't gotten ONE person who is interested in actually helping me with ANYTHING. I go to the tutoring center a few times a week for help with my calculator, and I can't get anyone to actually answer my questions. I go to my professors' office hours with questions, and although my Chem prof seems to be genuinely interested in answering questions, I do not matter as an individual student. I am a number, there. I am a sum of my tuition and an enrollment statistic. It is really frustrating, working so hard to get somewhere and feeling so unimportant once I get there. I spent the first week of classes attending a Biology class that I was assured I would be enrolled in, only to have my adviser tell the prof that I am not a "priority student" because she didn't think I could handle the work load. Then I had to fight with financial aid not to reduce my aid status because my enrollment status changed. Every adviser tells me something different. I can't get a straight answer. No one cares about me there.

It's been bad enough that I have to tell you, internetz, I'm thinking about quitting altogether. Maybe I'm just not cut out for college, not at big girl school.

I can't tell you much about what would make me successful there, but I can tell you that after this last week, I don't remember a time where I felt so shitty about myself and about my life.

I have spent no time with my crafting. I had lots of grand plans to knit over the summer, internetz. I was going to sew and build up some inventory and get my Etsy back up and running. I was going to have a tea party where my lady friends could come and drink iced tea and sangria and modify clothing and trade things that didn't fit them anymore. I was going to ride my bike more often. I was going to take Bigby swimming every day and go hiking. I was going to pick lots of berries and make lots of jam and make more apple butter to store up for the winter...

But I didn't. I didn't do any of those things. I finished a pair of arm warmers for the instructor I had for Anatomy all year. I worked at the lab. I watched a ton of Battlestar Galactica and True Blood and Grey's Anatomy. I re-read the Belgariad, this time out loud to John. I got through 4 of the Dresden File books. I did a lot of wishing I was doing something else.

This was a hard summer for me, internetz. In the interest of being honest, (since apparently this is honest day) I was somewhat paralyzed by the unknown. I was so terrified of all the things I couldn't control that I lost sight of how I could control the things I could actually change.

One of the only good things I did for myself was the workout schedule. John and I made a workout schedule and we went to the Y at least 4 days a week for July and August, and the beginning of September. When school started, we stopped going, because we couldn't figure out a schedule for us to continue to attend together. Then, John got the flu last week, and spent most of the weekend with a fever of over 104 degrees, and now he is too weak to start the new workout schedule we made. I am hoping that by the end of the week we are both feeling like we can actually hold to what we started. I am feeling discouraged and guilty about this, too.

Guilt seems to be a major theme in everything I've been doing. I have guilt about not taking time for myself and guilt about taking too much time for myself. I have guilt about working out so hard and then not doing it at all. I have guilt about food I eat that I know I should not be eating, and guilt for spending money on food when we shop for a week of groceries. I am under 200 pounds for the first time since I was 20, and I am wearing a size I haven't been able to buy since before I moved to Bellingham. John and I started cooking many of our meals vegan, and he bought me a copy of the Veganomicon to help further this goal. (BTW, this is the best cookbook I've ever used, and I highly recommend picking it up at your earliest convenience.) I still have some weird food issues that I need to work out, and I have more guilt about the fact that since school started, we haven't counted points or really done anything meaningful towards our weightloss goals.

So, internetz, the overriding themes seem to be fear and guilt, and my question is, how do I stop feeling guilty about being afraid? How do I stop the paralyzing fear and the overwhelming feeling that I should always be doing more?

I don't know the answer. I don't think that you know the answer, either. What I do know is that the first step to overcoming a problem is acknowledging that it is a problem in the first place.

So, O dear internetz, these are my problems: Guilt and Fear.

Now, how to combat them?