Ideal Isn’t Real

Posted on by Astrid

Today is the day the word I picked for #JusJoJan was assigned to, so I’m pretty much obliged to write a post. My original choice for a word was “Home”, but I made up my mind as I wrote my comment on Linda’s post and chose “Ideal”. My plan was to then write about my ideal care situation.

I am not sure I can do it though. An ideal situation, after all, doesn’t exist and chasing it may mean I lose sight of the things I could appreciate in what I already have. That’s possibly what happened with the move to my current care home, much as I struggle to admit it.

Of course, I knew there were going to be drawbacks to this care home, but I minimized them in my mind. When, back in like late 2021, I read up the information on this care home on my agency’s website, it sounded ideal. In fact, I remember at one point telling my staff and some people on an E-mail support group I belong to that it was my dream care home. But that’s judging from a promotional webpage, not reality.

Then when I actually got the opportunity to go here, what I found out on my visits here indeed revealed some more negatives. However, for the most part, these were vague “gut feeling” negatives, not facts. A factual negative was the fact that staff here don’t tell us clients who will be on shift the next day, reasoning that they might fall ill. “But we all come back,” the support coordinator reassured me, “and if we don’t, we’ll tell you.” Well, the one time a staff left so far, I didn’t find out in advance.

Maybe, looking back, there were clearer signs than just my gut feeling that the dream care home was going to turn into a nightmare. I am not sure. Maybe I didn’t ask the right questions. Maybe the staff – purposefully or not – avoided answering the real questions, focusing instead on details. Either way, I can’t help it now. What I can do is never believe something is going to be ideal again. Ideal isn’t real, after all.

Solo: Making the Most of My Alone Time

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for #JusJoJan is “solo”. It has many meanings, but the overarching one is “alone”. For this reason, I thought I’d use this as an opportunity to write about ways to make the most out of my alone time.

You see, I don’t really do well with alone time. It makes me anxious. At the same time, I need alone time. It helps me recharge. How can these two coexist, you might wonder. Honestly, I’m not quite sure.

However, the more important question is, how can I make sure the recharging effect gets the upper hand rather than my anxiety? The key to this is making the most out of my time alone.

In my old day schedule, I had random slots of alone time that could last anywhere between 15 and 60 minutes, sometimes longer if I didn’t come out of my room to alert the staff. This caused intense anxiety, because I never knew when I’d have time alone and, when I did, how long it’d last. This meant I didn’t know what activities to do during my alone time.

Now though, I usually have time slots of 30 to occasionally 45 minutes alone. In all honesty, I think the 30-minute time slots could be lengthened to 45 minutes if they could be decreased in number and by extension my time slots of activity lengthened too. This isn’t likely possible at my current care home though.

During the time of my old day schedule, I used to feel stressed when alone and as a result use up the time by wandering around my apartment. Now I occasionally still do this, but I try to put each moment of alone time to good use. For example, Bible study and blogging are things I can’t do when a staff person is in the room. I do these when I have alone time, but sometimes I struggle to finish them off during my 30-minute solo time slots. At the same time, I struggle to find meaningful activities that I can do within my 60-minute time slots (which are usually cut short) of one-to-one support. Part of the reason is my need to get into a routine – for example, of gathering my polymer clay supplies. Part of it is the fact that some staff start out by proposing a certain activity, which makes it hard for me to switch to wanting something else. And part of it is probably my mindset too, in that I get overwhelmed with not knowing how long an activity will take and thinking I “only” have this amount of time. This applies to alone time too.

I often say that, in an ideal world, I’d have one-on-one all the time. This isn’t true. In an ideal world, I’d have good chunks of alone time with staff only popping in once every 45 minutes (because otherwise I’d lose track of time), so essentially no extra care then, during later evenings and part of the weekend. I’d also have good chunks of supported activity during the day. Oh wait, that’s pretty much how I had it in Raalte and I was going to let go of comparisons with old homes. No, wait again, my day schedule back there wasn’t ideal either. But it allowed for longer chunks of activity time during weekdays and that’s really what I dream of.

God Created the Stars

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, I started for maybe the fifth or so time in a Bible-in-a-year plan. However, this time, unlike any of the other times, I didn’t just try to read the Bible cover to cover. In fact, I’m not reading it cover to cover at all. Yesterday’s assigned chapters included Psalm 1, Matthew 1 and of course Genesis 1. The plan also included commentary in the form of a devotional. The verse I want to talk about now is in Genesis 1.

“God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.” (Genesis 1:16 NIV)

The part the plan writer highlighted, was the last bit about the stars. He commented that there are literally billions of stars in our galaxy alone. I had no idea! However, isn’t this fascinating?

Whether the Biblical account of creation is literally correct, is beside the point. It isn’t about when or how. It is about who and why. And the “who” in the Bible is God.

I think it’s quite amazing that God created an entire universe, complete with constellations and constellations of stars, and put humanity at the center of it. He could just as easily have chosen anything else. Maybe if He’d chosen another living creature, it wouldn’t have ruined the planet and beyond as much as we do.

But God has His reasons for having chosen us. And having allowed us to mess up. I’m not yet sure what they are. Maybe I’ll never find out. It’s a fact of life though that we – all of us – mess up. That’s why we need Jesus.

And maybe God’s reason for having put us at the center of the universe and yet having allowed us to mess up massively, isn’t about us at all. We tend to make everything about us, after all, both individually and as a species.

Maybe by Godly standards, we aren’t as important as we think. In fact, I’m pretty sure that most of us overestimate our importance and underestimate our shortcomings precisely because we measure ourselves by human standards. At least I do. And yet by Godly standards, only one human (Jesus) met the bar. My defiant side says this isn’t fair. Yet it only isn’t fair if we put ourselves at the center of the universe. If we put Jesus at the center, it is most definitely fair.

I am joining in with #JusJoJan, for which the prompt today is “constellation”.

I’m also linking up with Inspire Me Monday.

My Hopes for 2023

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and a happy 2023 to you all! Regular readers of my blog know that I don’t do resolutions or new year’s goals. Instead, I call them hopes. Whether that isn’t just the exact same but worded slightly euphemistically, is up for debate. However, I found that, many years ago, when I did lists of resolutions, they didn’t work out. Now that I call them “hopes”, I usually probably subconsciously stick to them more. I say this every year as an introduction to my hopes.

This year, I haven’t actually thought of many hopes I have. That is, I do hope to achieve many things, but secretly I do think my “hopes” do need to be somewhat realistic in order to make it onto my new year’s list. Doesn’t that make them just like goals? Oh well, I guess so. With no further ado, I’m just going to write down the things I hope to achieve in 2023.

1. Get to a healthy weight. I never dreamt of writing this when I started my healthier eating journey at the beginning of 2022, but I lost over 10kg in 2022 and I’m only 3kg above a healthy BMI now.

2. Keep up my movement routine. I have my movement goal on my Apple Watch set pretty low at 300 active calories a day. I’d really like to surpass it regularly.

I would also like to improve on the parameters of my physical fitness level, such as my heart rate variability. These are all really low right now.

I am hoping to start actually exercising in other ways besides walking. I’d love to start swimming here on institution grounds.

3. Get to a more stable place mentally. In 2022, I hoped to remain stable mental health-wise, which got ruined by my choice to move and its consequences. Now, I’m hoping to get back to a place of relative calm again.

4. Further lower my antipsychotic dosage. I really hope the move to my current care home doesn’t mean I’m on 25mg of aripiprazole forever.

5. Get to a meaningful day structure and day activities. Okay, I have the new day schedule, which is better than the one my support coordinator gave me, but it’s not what I’d hoped for when I came here. I am really hoping to explore day activities beyond my room, beyond 60 minutes at a time and beyond one-on-one.

6. Write regularly. This is another thing I was pretty awesome at in 2021, hoped to maintain in 2022 and lost track of due to the move. I even only wrote five blog posts during the month of November. I am really hoping to get back into the writing groove this year.

7. Further explore my creative side. I’d really like to find ways to do part of my polymer clay work independently, so that I can actually do more complicated things with my 60-minute time slots of supported activity.

8. Socialize more. This was one of the main reasons for the move, at least according to the behavior specialists involved. Indeed, it is a positive aspect of my current home that wasn’t there at my old home. I honestly don’t know whether I can socialize much with the people at my home, but I can at least try and, if that doesn’t work out, there are almost 400 other residents here at the main institution. I’d really love to talk to some of them more.

I’d also love to connect to my peers in the cerebral palsy community more. I’ll hopefully attend the countrywide cerebral palsy day again in April and also hopefully join the online meetings more often. I’m also hoping to get in touch with the Eye Association more. I know this was something I hoped to achieve in 2022 but didn’t.

9. Get serious about the basics of my faith. I had a discussion about faith with my husband yesterday and the bottom line was that I tried to run without having learned to crawl, so to speak, because I was watching John MacArthur videos, which are deeply theological, even though I’m really still a new believer. I mean, okay, I’ve been a Jesus follower for two years, but I’m still struggling with the basic concepts of the Christian faith. That’s probably why I call myself a “progressive Jesus follower” rather than unapologetically claiming my identity as a Christian. I really hope to move closer on my journey towards God in 2023.

I am linking this post up with today’s #JusJoJan post, for which the optional prompt word is “resolution”. I am thinking of writing another post about resolutions in a different sense, namely the Model European Parliament debating contest I participated in during high school. However, it’s past 9PM so I don’t think I’ll have the time or energy for another blog post.

Crafting Unicorns!

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I came up with today’s prompt for #JusJoJan and it’s “Unicorn”.

I love love love unicorns! I have two unicorn soft toys. One, I got when I left the first day center with my current care agency back in early August of 2018. The other, I got in my Christmas hamper at the next day center that year.

Other than soft toys, I also have a number of unicorns I crafted out of polymer clay. Today, I am going to show you a few of my recent creations.

First up is a white unicorn charm. It is mostly two-dimensional, which I don’t really like, because it means its horn sticks out up rather than forward. It has a rose on top of its head. That one took me about half an hour to craft, because my Fimo Soft polymer clay was just a little too soft for my liking. For the rose, I used the color Cherry Red and I used Tropical Green for the leaves. The horn is done using Metallic Gold Fimo Effect.

The next unicorn I’m going to show you is my favorite so far. It was done using Pastel Lilac Fimo Effect. I did the mane and tail in Metallic Gold and Metallic Silver and used Metallic Gold for its horn. I added some purple glitters to its legs and ears for some extra sparkle.

Then last Thursday, I tried to create the perfect unicorn. I originally wanted to create the same unicorn as above but put it onto a green, flower-shaped slab. Eventually, I ended up choosing a different color, Fimo Soft Lavender, for this unicorn’s body. I did create the mane and tail using Metallic Silver and Metallic Gold again. Again, I added glitters, gold this time, though just to its legs.

Unfortunately, I forgot to blend the unicorn’s horn into the head and/or secure it with liquid clay. Rather, I secured it using wire only. This means the horn is a bit loose, which I’m told isn’t really visible but it does bother me. This is the reason I don’t think this is my best unicorn so far.

What do you think of these? Do you like unicorns?

Generosity

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for #JusJoJan is “Generosity”. I don’t tend to think of myself as a particularly generous person. That would not only be arrogant, but it would be incorrect as well. Particularly as a child, I liked receiving more than I liked giving. I was a very jealous child, often envying my sister for what she got and I didn’t.

I remember one day, when my sister and her friends had been participating in the four-day walking event in my city. It was the last day of the event and I was allowed to walk with them for this occasion. At the finish line, a parent of one of my sister’s friends had lots of candy for my sister and her friends, but he had none for me. I had a full-on tantrum in the car home even though my sister and her friends ended up giving me more candy than they kept for themselves. It caused the oldest friend, a girl my age, to cry. I was ten at the time, so far too old for toddler tantrums like this. I feel intense shame about this incident as I look back, seeing that I should have known it wasn’t fair of me to expect candy since I hadn’t walked the entire event. Much less should I have tantrummed about it in the car.

Now that I’m an adult, I am a little less worried about material goods and a lot less jealous of others, but it still doesn’t come natural to me to give material things away. Thankfully, generosity comes in different ways and I do love expressing it in other ways. I love to create my own gifts for people. Yes, of course they are material too, but that feels different.

Still, I am often reminded of the Sesame Street episode in which Bert and Ernie have a cake and Ernie gives Bert the smaller slice. Bert teaches him that he’s supposed to offer Bert the larger slice first. Then Ernie asks: “So what would you do if you were to offer me the cake?” Then he replied he’d take the smaller slice and offer Ernie the larger slice. “But you have the smaller slice now, like you wanted!” Ernie objects. This is child logic and it is incorrect. It is not how we’re supposed to be generous. We are supposed to love others like ourselves. Others before ourselves, even.

I pray God leads me to a life of greater generosity. I know I am supposed to love others as myself and that includes giving generously of myself to others. Like I said yesterday, when I trust that God will provide for my needs, He will. As a follower of Christ, I have no need to worry. In the end, everything will work out okay.

Grateful for a Life of Abundance

Posted on by Astrid

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” (Philippians 4:6 NIV)

The above Bible verse was the verse of the day for today on YouVersion. It immediately spoke to me. Today also, the prompt word for #JusJoJan is “Abundance”.

a thing I realized when I read up on abundance, was how fortunate I am. I don’t have to worry about not having something to eat tomorrow. I don’t have to worry about not having clothes on my back. I have a roof over my head – two, in fact, in a way, in that I have both my room in the care facility and my and my husband’s house. Though I do worry slightly about my financial security now that it’s time for my new long-term care copay to be determined, I really don’t have to worry. I have enough money to afford my necessities and most non-necessities I want too. Even if (most likely) I do get a higher copay, I still don’t have to worry about going into debt. All this means I am far more well off than the vast majority of people.

I also live a life of abundance because I am in reasonably good health both physically and mentally. Though I endured trauma in both childhood and my adult life, I am currently safe – even though PTSD sometimes tells me otherwise. I know there are a lot of people who feel happier or more stable mentally than me, but I have been in psychiatric hospitals long enough to know there are also many people who are a lot sicker than me.

I know that comparisons don’t always work. Telling yourself others have it worse isn’t a magical cure for misery or depression. However, gratitude definitely helps cultivate happiness.

I have an abundance of reasons to be grateful. Last Saturday, I listed ten gratefuls for the past 24 hours alone. Today, I could list a number of things too. I am grateful for my favorite Christmas cookies, called cinnamon stars. I finished the first packet out of four I got for Christmas. I am grateful for Senseo coffee. I am grateful the web store accepted my returned Fitbit charger (it wasn’t working). I am grateful elementary and secondary schools are reopening next week. Although I don’t have kids, this does feel like a small glimmer of hope for a way out of lockdown.

I trust that I will be able to live a life of abundance in spite of the hardships I may endure. I cannot do it alone, but through the grace of God in Jesus Christ, I will get there. He does not always give me what I want. I mean, I may actually have to pay a much higher long-term care copay than I expect now (I won’t find out until the 12th or so). Then again, He will take care of me as long as I put my trust in Him. Isn’t that awesome?

Linking up with InstaEncouragements.

Jade

Posted on by Astrid

We don’t have an alter named Jade. We do have one named Jane, one named Janita and one named Jace (short for Jaclyn). But we have no Jade. Then again, we love jade.

Jade is a beautiful green gemstone. At least, that’s the color we know. There are also creamy white and blue jades. We had at least one, a green jade, in our gemstone collection, I believe.

It is supposed to be a protective stone, in terms of crystal healing. I’m not sure I believe in crystal healing, but to some extent, I guess I do. Jade is supposed to promote self-sufficiency. In that sense, I guess our alter named Jane would love it as her stone.

When I look at the supposed benefits of jade, I see it also promotes balance, harmony and moderation. To me, this signifies that it could be an especially useful stone for us.

It isn’t specifically suited to our Zodiac sign. That is, it is suited to Libra, which we are supposed to be if you take our due date as our birth date. Which I have no idea whether any astrologers even do. I guess not. Our regular Zodiac sign is Cancer.

Jade is connected to the heart chakra. The heart chakra’s color is green. At least, when I did a guided color meditation using the chakras, I was told to envision the heart chakra as green. I wonder whether there’s any connection between the main colors of gemstones and what chakras they’re most related to.

Synesthetically, the word “jade” is also green. Three out of the four letters are green and the overarching color of the word is an emerald green. I truly think it’s amazing!

Linking up with #JusJoJan, for which the prompt today is “jade”. I’m not sure I’m allowed to link up, since I didn’t previously participate this year, but oh well.

Blogging

Posted on by Astrid

I am once again joining in with #JusJoJan. Yesterday I did write, of course, but I didn’t link up, since my post wasn’t for the prompt. Today’s prompt is to share about your blogging endeavors. Why did you start blogging? How did you come up with your theme? How has blogging affected your life? And so on.

I probably shared this on my older blogs a couple of times already, but I don’t think I jotted about my blogging on here. I was probably destined to be a blogger, as even as a young teen in the late 1990s, I longed for someone to read what I’d written. Not my parents, of course, but I was pretty open about my writing otherwise. My father at one point joked that I showed my new best friend my diary the first time she visited me. I didn’t, but I did show her some personal writings of mine. Those got her to feel pity for me. The friendship wasn’t healthy to begin with, as I was needy and clingy. The friendship ended not even half a year later. Today, I won’t go into that. It only serves to prove that I was very open in my writing from an early age on.

I got a computer with Internet access in May of 2002, when I was fifteen. Within six months of that, I’d started an online diary. The contents of that diary, unlike those of many of my later attempts at keeping a blog, are still available online. Their original location, on DiaryLand, might even still exist.

In February of 2007, I created my WordPress account and moved the contents of my diary to my first legitimate blog. This diary had over the years started to contain some more essay-like posts besides the diary-style navel-gazing. However, with DiaryLand, there was no way of organizing your posts by categories or tags. My parents criticized me for being too personal in my diary. I didn’t intend on becoming less so, but now I could put all my navel-gazing into a category called “Personal” for people to skip.

I have had three blogs (if I include this one) that were lasting. First, I had said blog moved from DiaryLand. Then I had Blogging Astrid, which I originally intended to keep alongside this blog. That didn’t work.

A Multitude of Musings, the blog you are now reading, is, in fact, a restart of another relatively long-lasting blog I wrote in 2011. I am a bit sad that I deleted its content years ago, but I can’t undo that. Still, my stats say the day I had the most views was in 2011.

Blogging has had a huge impact on my life. My husband checked out my blog – the one that had been moved from DiaryLand – before he asked to meet me in real life. This meant he already knew me pretty well before we’d first met. In this sense, my marriage makes up for the friendship I wrote about above, as my husband chooses to stick by me despite my openness. I don’t encourage him to read my blog now, but if he wants to, he can. He’s occasionally been cross with me for sharing something about him. I try only to share the positive now.

Why did you decide to start blogging? How has blogging impacted your life?

My Hopes for 2019

Posted on by Astrid

Happy new year everyone! Today and hopefully throughout this month, I’ll be joining in with Just Jot It! January or #JusJoJan for short, organized by Linda G. Hill. Today’s prompt is to reflect back on 2018 or write about your plans or resolutions for 2019. since I already wrote about my 2018, I’m going to use this post to jot down my hopes, goals and plans for 2019. Here goes.

1. Find suitable supported housing. This is my main hope for 2019. Of course, given my experience with finding (or not finding) supported housing out of the mental institution, I don’t have my hopes up too high. However, I at least want to get long-term care funding approved. That way, even if I don’t find a housing place, I can get more support in my current home than I get now.

2. Get back on track with healthier living. I didn’t gain any weight over the holidays and in 2018, lost a pound or 500 grams, while I expected I’d gained. I’m proud of that, but I’m still obese. Knowing that I’ve experienced some time when my BMI was under 30 this past year, I badly want to lose those two or three pounds it takes to be back at just overweight.

More importantly though, I want to embrace a healthier lifestyle. I want to exercise regularly and eat at least somewhat healthfully.

3. Blog regularly. In January, participating in #JusJoJan means I’ll have something to write about each day, as Linda will be posting prompts. I plan on writing regularly throughout the year though.

4. Get a new computer. I have had this on my list of plans ever since 2017. This year, I’m serious about it though, as I finally convinced my husband too that my current PC is outdated. I am seriously considering getting a Mac, as that’d mean I could do without having to get a screen reader separate from the operating system. I already love my iPhone, but I feel I need a computer too.

5. Stay mentally stable. Over 2018, I’ve not had serious crises other than the one in January that eventually got me kickked out of my old day activities place. I’m still considering terminating mental health treatment once I’ve found suited supported housing. After all, I’m pretty confident that the depression I suffered early in 2018 and that required an increase in my antidepressant dose, was caused by my difficulties coping at home and at day activities. I do still experience trauma-related symptoms, but at this point, they’re manageable.

What are your hopes for 2019?