Saturdays are stressful. Saturday night is lonely.

[manuel_moe_g]

When posting, scroll down to “Attachments” tab

[Mental Fairy]

Hi Oak, I just use Lunapic app to adjust size of photos. Then upload as attachment. Was trial by error for me. I’m not even tech minded and worked it out!! That’s saying something! Where you have options tap below when typing tap on attachment file next to it.

Hope this helps. Manuel Moe might be better at explaining!

[Mental Fairy]

Thinking of you this weekend Oak. Smash this Sunday out of the ball park.

[oak]

Mental Fairy, thank you so much for inquiring.

An update, friends!

Saturday: I woke early, walked to the store to buy a kiwi (and see the pretty cashiers), showered/shaved/clean clothes, Buspar, caffeine, and stayed ahead of hunger. Success!

Sunday (noon, now): I enjoyed some beautiful peppers with an early lunch, and since I am showered and shaved, I should be okay for HALT today. If I have a meltdown, or proto-meltdown, I'll swing my kettlebells for a few minutes, and take photos and post them here, as our good friend Mental Fairy suggested.

I send a special weekend shoutout to another good friend, River Girl, whose fine example of courage and honesty in sharing her own weekend struggles have inspired this thread.

[Mental Fairy]

You rock Oak!!!

[oak]

You rock Oak!!!

Thanks, Mental Fairy. I appreciate your encouragement,since I needed all the hope I could muster:

Well friends, Saturday, being devious, showed up Friday!

Yes, the Friday night of a long weekend. An all-time classic time to have a moderate mental meltdown, if you're anything like me.

Friday, which started innocently enough

Getting out twice yesterday, to go the store to buy fruit (I think the age-appropriate cashier noticed me) I walked quite a bit and aggravated a skin tag (ouch!).

My mind immediately catastrophized, with visions of it getting infected, losing my leg, and probably dying. One's mind can race, especially at 11 pm at the start of a long weekend.

I woke at 5am, wrote out a plan for the next three days, and went back to sleep.

I'm considering this Saturday, today, to last from yesterday through all of Monday.

Saturday through all of Monday

At the risk of being woo-woo, I wonder if my body forced me to slow down so I could do some shadow work (journaling-scary!) this weekend. To take the three days to stop, and really look at my shadow self, much as I've tried to avoid that.

I'll post again Monday night with an update. Thanks for listening!

[Mental Fairy]

I think you are discovering yourself Oak.

[Mental Fairy]

Hi Oak, hope your doing ok. Week ahead and we are so close to end of the year. It’s terrible how fast this year went. But we are all still here!

[oak]

Hi Oak, hope your doing ok. Week ahead and we are so close to end of the year. It’s terrible how fast this year went. But we are all still here!

Thank you, Mental Fairy. Well said, and so true.

Well friends, I've made it to the end of a long weekend with a minimum of meltdowns.

In addition to immediate troubles, I wrote out a preliminary plan for the next two years. I want to put sleep apnea behind me (2022), build my professional skills and get hired (2023), and move to someplace where I can go swing dance 3 times a week (2024). I also hope to be kind of person who attracts feminine energy (throughout).

It seemed natural to break the two years into 3-month increments, and each quarter-year has 2 or 3 action items I'd like to complete.

Not that I intend to achieve every single one completely, but to have some goal gives me a reason to face tomorrow.

Summary thoughts

All in all it was the long weekend I needed, if not the long weekend I wanted.

Maybe I can have that long weekend I want this time in 2024, and more than a little of it next year.

Edit to add:

Many of these goals for through 2024, if successfully met, will go a long way to resolving/mitigating why I’m lonely on Saturdays. (A topic which is difficult to admit, much less post about.)

[Beany Boo]

[…] mitigating why I’m lonely on Saturdays. (A topic which is difficult to admit, much less post about.)

Profound, nice work Oak