Question of the day.

   Have you ever experienced phone anxiety? How do you deal with it? 

   My answer: 

   For me, this is definitely something that i experience regularly, pretty much with any kind of phone call I have to make or answer. I’ve heard that apparently phone anxiety is so common because people don’t see the face of the person they’re talking to, which is quite ridiculous in my case given that I am blind, and in theory I should probably be more comfortable with phone calls because I hate people assuming what I’m thinking or feeling based on what they thhink my facial expression is, but I think in my case the phone anxiety is just an extension of my usual social anxiety or something like that. Except for some reason the phone anxiety is worse, because in most instances, I’d much rather talk to someone in person than on the phone. One of few exceptions is my Godmother, interacting withh whom I find quite challenging, but on the phone it’s slightly easier to keep some sort of script, or cut the conversation short when it’s going in a direction I don’t like. Also with people I’m close to, I usually don’t mind either way, though talking on the phone with my Dad can get pretty awkward, but not in a way that would be anxiety-provoking. 

   How do I deal? Well, I avoid making phone calls as much as I can. I never answer calls from people I don’t have a clue who they are, unless I’m expecting a call from someone I don’t know. If I have a choice to do something over phone vs online or in person, most of the time I choose the latter, unless there’s some specific situation where phone indeed has some advantage over the other option, like doing something online is not very accessible or reaching someone via phone is more likely to result in something happening faster thann when reaching them via email. And of course I have my Mum who is my spokesperson, and if I absolutely have to make or answer a phone call and absolutely cannot do it, then my Mum does it for me. When I do have to make or answer a phone call, I try not to dwell too much on it in advance, but I also never do it completely spontaneously, I always have to have some kind of script planned at least vaguely, and sometimes I even write notes in advance. 

   How about you? If you have experienced it, is it something you deal with consistently, or just in specific situations, or is it something you used to deal with but no longer do? 

Travelle – “Phone Dating”.

Hi guys! 🙂

For the last few months, I’ve been sharing with you some music from the Norwegian singer, songwriter and producer Travelle, and today it’s time for another song by him. As you can easily figure out from the lyrics, this song deals with the topic of Tinder dating, and how shallow it is. As much as this is difficult to comprehend for some people, I have never, ever dated and have no real desire to do it just for the sake of it, so I don’t really find it very personally relatable as such, also this is obviously from a guy’s perspective, but I think it shows well what it must feel like and how difficult and frustrating it must be and I like how authentic this song feels.

How I’ve been feeling lately.

Today, I’d like to write some a bit longer post inspired by a journaling prompt again, as I haven’t done that in a while. It probably won’t be too long or indepth, but I think it’ll be nice to do and also fill y’all in a bit on what’s going on for me. The prompt I chose to inspire myself with is from Listify by Marina Greenway and goes like this:

   Lately, I’ve been feeling… Your state of mind changes over time and through the seasons. Record how you are feeling right now. What is going through your mind? Are you responding emotionally to something that has happened earlier in the week? Are you anticipating your day in a positive or negative way? What does your general state of being feel like? Do this every so often to chronicle your journey.

I typically write in my journal and/or on here about how I’m feeling in a more prosaic form, and I don’t think doing a list will become my typical way of doing it, but I think it could be fun once in a while. So here is my list.

•    Super anxious. I started feeling a bit anxious last Saturday (in this particular case when I say anxious I mean the sensory anxiety thing, but also generally I was super jumpy and hyper alert) and all that for no clear reason. I have some ideas now as for what could cause it, but given the intensity of the anxiety it seems very inadequate and this sensory anxiety episode has been one of the worst I’ve had in the last couple years. Last weekend and the beginning of the week was particularly awful, now I’m slowly recovering and it’s much better but still far from my baseline.
•    Excited about MIMRAs (My Inner Mishmash Readership Award) and relieved that I’ve finally sent them out. This is a really happy and exciting process for me and I love the idea so much and that I came up with this, though all the preparations can get a bit exhausting. I am also hopeful that the winners will enjoy their MIMRAs as that’s the whole point of it. I am also happy that Sofi likes her new iPhone which she got from me earlier this week. It was meant to be a Christmas present, but since she chose the colour of it and the accessories anyway I figured I could just as well give it to her right away. Her old iPhone was in an awful state (our parents bought her a used one and it was in a pitiful condition already when she got it, but they refused to get her a new one even though the old one is now barely usable, because Mum says she doesn’t deserve it and needs to have higher grades. I don’t see it as a prize for anything, I think she should have a functioning phone to be able to do her schoolwork from home and not be lagging too far behind her peers with her knowledge and abilities regarding technology. Plus now that she has a functioning, brand new phone which will be supported for a few more years to come, unlike the old one, it should definitely serve her well at least until she’s 18, and then she can buy a new phone for herself, so no one of us will need to bother with buying her another phone any time soon. If she breaks it earlier, I emphasised it to her that it’s entirely her problem, although she does have coverage). She is really enjoying having a functional phone, and Mum now says that it was a good idea.
•    A bit frustrated and tired. Frustrated with the fact that I’ve really been having a lot of migraines lately. Like, the last few months or so. It was the same last year about this time, autumn-winter, and then it got better, so I’m wondering if it’s some sort of a seasonal thing and if so why that is. It’s really getting in the way of things. The migraines themselves aren’t even all that painful, I’ve had worse and I know people have worse, but they’re really energy draining and make me feel kind of generally sick, so I’m effectively unable to do much of anything while having a migraine, especially that it often gets worse when I try to force myself to do something more ambitious that requires getting out of bed, and they’re more difficult to get rid of than they used to be. The combination of migraine medication and good sleep, or sometimes even just a usual NSAID if I’d take it early enough, used to be enough to get rid of the problem in one day, occasionally it would linger for some longer time but that was rare, while now the meds help rather rarely and it’s a bit like a lottery, at least I haven’t found any connections as to when and why they work or don’t work, and I need much more rest and sleep to make myself feel any better, I also don’t want to take the meds too often. I know it’s like this or even worse for many people who have migraines, but mine were generally easier to handle before so the situation is new to me and I’m feeling a bit clueless, and like I said frustrated because they often get in the way just when I want to do something productive. And as for the tired part, well I had a migraine yesterday until about noon today, and I’m still feeling a bit tired and sluggish afterwards.
• A little stressed/worried, and a little looking forward to Christmas. Christmas is typically a stressful period for me, as it is for many of us. I don’t really know yet what it will be like for us this year, as we don’t have any specific plans, so typically I’m feeling rather apprehensive. But it’s also generally a nice occasion and I hope it’ll be at least a bit fun and not just stressful like it was last year.
•    Desperate for a new faza. But that’s been the case for quite some time now and you probably all know about it, I don’t have anything to add to this really.

And I think that’s it. My day, apart from the migraine earlier, has been okayish, and it’s now coming to an end, so I’m not really anticipating anything today except for hoping for a decent night’s sleep. And my state of being feels a bit sluggish, a bit jumpy, but overall rather neutral at the moment.

How are you feeling? Do let me know. 🙂

 

Question of the day.

When did you last take a gamble with anything?

My answer:

A gamble? Hm, can’t remember anything particular that would happen lately. I am not much of a risktaker generally so I don’t think I do it very often. One spectacular thing that I do remember now was when I was I guess a tween or in my early teens or something, in the boarding school, and my Mum has just bought me access to the Internet on my phone. The thing was I didn’t seem to be fully aware of how actually Internet, or rather its limits, work on a mobile phone. I was playing with it for an entire evening, hanging around in the Internet, and even downloading some rubbishy stuff, small things, but big enough for my Internet limit, and to make the phone company rub their hands. I remember that when I finally went to sleep, I just quickly closed the phone and didn’t even close the page I was on, I guess something was still downloading as far as I can remember.

Then I woke up next day in the morning, happily went to school – we didn’t take our phones to school and mornings were way too busy to do any calls or text anyone or do anything with your phone so I’m pretty sure I just left it the way it was in my room, with that webpage still open – and came back in the afternoon. I checked my phone and I had quite a few calls from my Mum, plus one from some number I didn’t know, who left me a voice message. I remember that it left me a little confused because it turned out to be a guy from my phone company, and it were always my parents who handled all that phone stuff, quite obviously I suppose, so I’d rather think they should contact them and not me. Anyway, all that I could deduce from that guy’s mumbling was that he asked me to get in touch with him. I thought maybe my Mum would know something more, maybe it was some sort of mistake or whatever.

SO I called her and found out that she is in a great distress, we actually couldn’t even communicate properly for a while because we didn’t understand what one another actually is talking about and wants. But finally from all that mess it became frighteningly and crystal clear to me that I just did an incredibly scary and risky, but also ridiculous thing, so much so that now we all laugh when we are talking about it, but back then it wasn’t fun. My parents just got a phone bill for around 250 euro!!! Or I guess it would be that much in euros, don’t remember that exact amount and am not the best at converting all that stuff haha. ANyway, that was scary and for a while I just thought it’s some sort of a joke, but it definitely didn’t look like one! 😓 Poor my Dad, I was afraid he’ll never get over it, both for the sake of myself and him ( 😀 ). It was also hard for me to get why did it actually happen haha.

So yeah, that was scary. And what was even more horrific for me was that just a couple of weeks or so before, my Dad finally promised to buy me something I really wanted and dreamt about and stuff, and now of course it wasn’t an option, because, first (and foremost 😛 ) he was raging, and second, all those money he could spend on that thing, as well as some more, went on to my phone bill. 😀 I was defeated, by myself.

There were no other consequences for me than my Dad being mad, my Mum being frustrated, and my Internet settings being changed so that I wouldn’t be able to do more than my limit would allow, which was a relief for me too as I was freaking out I could have accidentally make another gamble like this, oh, and my family and school friends making quite a lot of sarcastic comments about that incident, for a long time, hahaha. So with time it has become luckily just a memory. And, funnily enough, I did finally get the thing I wanted so much at the time, later on, but for free. So sometimes gambles really pay off, don’t they? 😛

How about you? 🙂