YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

My thought currently on repeat is: WHY CAN'T I JUST GET MY SHIT TOGETHER? Okay, I'm self-employed, so I'm always worried about earning enough money, so I take on as much work as I possibly can, but then when I do that, I feel panicked because I don't have enough me-time. As the work hours accumulate, and my me-time is chipped away, I let everything just go to hell - like, I can't even manage to remind myself to drink enough water or take pee breaks during a demanding day. I don't buy nutritious groceries, I don't feed myself enough and/or good food during the day, so that by the time I get home, all I want to do is self-isolate, numb out, and eat. Plus, during the day, I feel a rage building inside of me that leaks out of me in the most passive-aggressive ways; I see myself being grumpy and cunty in a job setting (I work in live events/theatre, which is a bit more forgiving of this kind of stuff [I think?] than more rigid jobs with hard and fast HR regulations) - or maybe I'm overstating how much it leaks out but the fact that it leaks out at all is a further frustration to me. And even as I see it happening, you'd think that as I catch myself, I'd pull back, right? Take a breath, readjust? No - when I get depleted like this, I just dig even further in, almost revelling in the grumpiness I exude. Aigh! Why?! And then I feel shame and guilt, which leads me to self-isolate with an even bigger vengeance, and the whole cycle just keeps repeating itself.

I want so badly to just be able to ride the wave of changing job schedules - my co-workers do it all the time, without it seeming to ruin their fucking lives and sleep schedule like it does mine - and be able to adapt my own needs (sleep, thinking, exercise, meal prep) to all the fluctuating schedules I'm wedged into. The fact that I am fully capable of doing this when I have a set routine schedule gives me hope, but, man....I just wish I was at all adaptable. Fuck.

Thanks for listening.

I believe you have just renewed your membership in the human race for the next year.

Seriously, though, I think some of what you're saying is pretty common to the self-employed, no? I mean, you're in a constant state of feast-or-famine, always feeling like the ants in the fable when what you really want is to be the grasshopper now and then.

I think that people often get the idea that because they chose something hard, they don't have the right to have problems with it being hard. Like, you chose to be self-employed, so if you complain about it being hard, you're just being a whiner. That's BS. I think everyone has a right to say when something is hard and to want a little support.

So I hereby totally back you up. Self-employment is hard as hell. Taking good care of yourself while you're doing it is also hard as hell. Anyone who says otherwise is probably trying to sell you something.