Saw that the French nickname for this part of the year is the void (le vide) and yes, I've experienced the 'what day is this anyway' already. Because, two days off is something I just don't get anymore, much less two days off, two days on, and another day off! So I woke Friday night and had no idea what was going on or what I should be doing Saturday morning. Even though I do the postal route every Saturday. What is this.. Saturday? What is time? Where am I, even?
Enough of that. Studying a lot more Latvian, using bern istaba and tuta lietas, ba ba dum and baltoslav. I often forget the names of those things and can only remember the flavor - so I post here what they are so I can look it up again later. I love Tuta's style - and my daughter just recently noticed the hats. Why does she have an airplane in her hair? So I had to explain it to her.
One of the most useful things towards learning is to have the subtitles on in Latvian, stop it, open up a second window, try to type the word I saw (without peeking) and then find out the translation of it. I have to remember the word and remember what was said about the word, find out the translation, then try to relate it back to what I heard - quickly, and then maybe replay the sentence or wait until the next time they say the word again with better knowledge of it. It is very real learning. When I am playing baltoslav in Latvian, after studying a lot on ba ba dum in Lithuanian, I stop and three-point-translate the words that are different, like 'pillow' is different in Latvian and Lithuanian (a lot of words are almost the same, too) and recognize what the word is in English, Latvian and Lithuanian all at once to make contact points between the languages. I can feel 'brain burn' during this, like when I started learning Catalan (in Spanish). It actually feels great :)
I studied Greek on the other platform, and have been improving my Spanish to French score on the third platform. That contributes perhaps, to 'le vide'.
Other than that we are eating leftovers, and I am trying to clean a thing here or there. There is always laundry. I say I won't take down the Christmas tree until after January 5th, but most years I am still forgetting to take it down come April.
I've planned to go out and spend a gift certificate that was gotten on the postal route from one of my residents. We don't often go out to restaurants at all, and there is some social anxiety about it. I talked to E about the social anxiety (and I had a lot of it yesterday morning after giving a gift back to that resident in return, and all the social 'did I do that right' etc. insecurities about that kept me beating myself up for two hours or more) and told her it really helped when my dad finally told me that he did that too.
The biggest thing is you always feel it was silly and didn't matter that much after it - but when you're inside it, and you can't break out from it, it feels even worse to tell yourself it is silly, it doesn't feel silly. The only thing that helps, as my dad also said, was to 'plow through' it - do other things that need to be done, find something like a book or music to distract you for a moment - and eventually the 'reverberation' of the anxiety will die down some. THEN, after it did ease up a little, THEN remind yourself that you made it through to this point, that it feels silly but only after the fact, and that life goes on and things need to be done. You're the person that is there to do them, and then go do them.
As I said on another site : Some days I have to remind myself that it is okay to have difficulty with being a singular entity inexplicably residing in a corporeal form that is adherent to the laws of space and time. Other days, I have to just admit that I am (anxious / impatient / annoyed / frustrated) and get myself up and do some chores.
