Once upon a time, in a not so distant place there lived a girl. Sometimes this girl felt very happy and content. She would go out into the sunshine and walk around lake and up hills with her friends. She spent her days reading plays, looking at photographs, going to meetings and making CAD drawings of her ideas. A few weeks a month she would spend all of her waking time in different dark rooms with a lot of empty seats playing with lights and collaborating with friends. This was what she loved. She was good at this.
At the very end of summer, after a particularly lovely show filled with lovely lighting and lovely collaborating, the girl became very very sad. She could read plays, look at photographs, and practice making CAD drawings of her ideas, but there were no meetings scheduled, no friends to collaborate with. She spent all her time alone in her apartment trying to distract herself from the bareness of her calendar. Every morning after breakfast, she sat on the same side of her big white couch with her laptop on her lap. She got stuck. The sun would shine tauntingly through the windows but still she was immobile. Days passed as she moved through emotions: lonely, bored, sad, angry that she could not cut herself from the couch and enjoy her time off. She filled her head with clouds of negative thoughts. She was so mad at herself that she could not be productive. Quietly stewing alone, she realized that it was harder and harder to get unstuck from the couch. (This was not the first time she had gotten stuck to the couch.)
One day, she managed to get unstuck long enough to run a few errands including one to a dark room where some of her friends were working. While she was out, she managed to tell a few friends how bad she was feeling. As soon as she started talking she felt some of the clouds start to go away. She told her mother that she was depressed and her mother wisely suggested that the girl go help her mother with some organizing projects. She went away from her couch and her apartment, with her laundry, to visit her family.
The girl became a laundry machine, washing sheets and towels and socks and shirts. She recycled and organized and remembered that her mother who works one day a week for pay, really has 5 complicated part time volunteer jobs. And though the girls own room is messy (a thing that makes her crazy rather than comforting her), she can actually see very clearly and easily how to organize things that do not belong to her. While she was at the house on the water, she was kept busy. Cooking, talking, organizing. She had no time to sit on a couch with her laptop and get stuck. When she left two days later, her eyes were as bright as the sunshine. By the end of the week, emails flew and the girl got to put a few orange meetings into her color coded calendar.
Things that made the girl feel better: Routine. Eating delicious vegetables. Conversations with people on the phone or in person, rather than trying to feel connected via 140 characters. Watching the hummingbirds. Talking to mothers about vegetable gardens that yield so much we jokingly call it her farm. You can almost finish a project and it feels almost as good as finishing. It is not possible to clean and reorganize a whole room in one day. Move around as much as you can.
Remember sad stormy girl! You are in control of your own loneliness. Don't get stuck to the couch. Make plans. Go outside. Meet people. Pretend you are the sunshine.
