Conflicted

I set out today to write a few words about something I am currently wrestling with. I fear, however, those readers who have been urging me to write a book may have got their wish, as this has turned out to be rather lengthy. 🙂 I shall not blame any reader who wishes to dispense with reading this one in the interest of more fruitful or enjoyable pursuits. As committing things to writing here is, I find, helpful in my own grappling with the affairs of life, however, I  am going to publish this despite the length.

Did you ever wake up wondering who you were, what you stood for, whether you were going to remain true to your values and convictions or go down a different path? Or whether your convictions are really so damned important, so rigid they must never bend? I have. This morning! And many mornings lately. I’ve stood in front of the mirror staring at the face in there, asking “What’s happened to you?” and wishing for a reply. Preferably one that made some sense!

I may have lived a life of isolation and limitations but I have always known who I was. Even if who I was and what I stood for was not always evident to the world. I knew what I believed in, knew that I could trust myself to always follow a decent, respectable path, make sound, responsible decisions. I knew the values instilled in me as a youth would last a lifetime, providing guidance and assuring I could always respect my decisions if not always myself in general. Now I’m not so sure. I’m confused. Have I lost my way?

I’m faced with a decision. To many it might seem minor but to me it is anything but. Whatever road I take may have unforeseen and unpredictable consequences. But most of all, I’m not sure whether I will be able to look back on the choice I make now with respect and confidence that it was valid. This has been brewing for a while, but I’ve been too busy and overwhelmed to give it due consideration or realize how important of a milestone it was going to be. Now that things are slowing down, this is coming to the forefront.

Readers who have been around a while might recall back in May I made a big decision. I voluntarily gave up owning a vehicle in order to have money to fix up my old, dilapidated home. It is important to me for a number of reasons. Let us pause to examine them.

I am embarrassed by the condition of my home. I am uneasy having people come over, especially visitors from afar who may not know my circumstances or who may be well to do or at least financially comfortable and accustomed to decent surroundings. I stress over it to no small degree. While I do live a very isolated life for the most part, would be visitors from afar are not unheard of. My ham radio hobby tends to find them. Not often to be sure, but occasionally. People I have known and communicated with for years often wish to drop by for a first-time face-to-face meet. I have had visitors from Idaho, California, England, and more. Usually they have no idea about my life, my illness, my financial circumstances. I fear seeing this place may be quite a shock to them, though none have shown outward evidence of it. To be fair, the condition of my home is not the only reason I stress over having visitors. But it is on the list, and not the least of the factors involved.

I take pride in my work with the place. Surely it is not a professional job as I am inexperienced. But at the end of the day or the end of a project I always know I did my best, and I am content with that (minor exception being the project still underway with the storage area, but at least if it has flaws which should have been preventable it isn’t my actual living space). It feels good to do the work and better still to feel that sense of pride in my accomplishments.

In many ways this place is inconvenient and a source of daily aggravation due to its condition. Cleaning is a more a chore than it ought to be. Some areas are hard to clean due to rough, deteriorated surfacers. Some, owing to wear, never look clean no matter the effort expended on them. Without doubt this contributes to my lack of motivation for keeping things tidy in general. Storage space is at a premium, and some areas which ought not be used for such are crammed to the brink for want of more appropriate spaces. My disdain for this is considerable.

Let us not neglect the stupidity factor. No proper consideration of my current dilemma would be complete without mention of that. Dear faithful readers, you know what is coming here, do you not? Yes, it is that again. Though I know I can never fall in love, never marry, never have a soul mate, there remains within that undying hope, no matter how unrealistic. No matter how much I try to deny it, drive it out, run from it; no matter how much I despise and loathe it; no matter how desperately I want to be free of it, there it remains. Damn! Hope is one thing. But must it intrude upon my daily affairs? Every year I start out contemplating the repairs and improvements to be made, and every year it’s the same thing. I start out with a list of my priorities based on my current life and what has annoyed me most about the place of late. I get excited about the possibility of eliminating the worst offender, and then there it is again: that nagging voice from within, monkey wrench at the ready, asking “But which improvement would a woman most appreciate?” And of course the whole decision making process begins anew, with that consideration imposed. Is there to be no such thing as freedom from this unwanted part of self? Shall I even try deny this inner secret hope is, in fact, another driving force behind the whole home improvement thing? What would be the point? Were it absent I suspect the list of home improvements to be made would be very much shorter.

Let us now examine a quite different thing. I have too many times made mention of my hobby here. By one measure it does not belong, as this is supposed to be about the challenge of life with anxiety disorders. Yet the hobby is so inseparable from everything else that my life can in no way be described without it. I fear without the hobby I would have no unique identity at all. I frequently pause to wonder, were it not for ham radio, would I have gone insane or simply given up long ago? It is a passion quite unlike any other in my life. I love it. Were I to make a list of every thing that causes me to feel joy, every thing I look forward to with anticipation and excitement, every thing that instills a desire to rise in the morning and get on with the affairs of the day, every thing that causes me to think about remaining healthy and living long, I must believe my hobby would account for the vast majority of them. Not only that, but it exerts influence over the others, such as fixing up my home.

What of it as regards my current dilemma? Some few months prior to my opting to do without a vehicle in order to concentrate on fixing my castle, as it were, another development was taking place. Some fault with a neighbor’s furnace began causing it to emit no small measure of electromagnetic interference, which, when it is running, effectively prevents reception of radio signals on my assorted apparatus*. Whereas most of my on air radio activity is a winter occupation and this is a cold climate, one may consider this all but pulls the rug from under enjoyment of the hobby. There is nothing whatsoever I can do about this, despite Federal Communications Commission regulations intended to protect radio services from harmful interference. The neighbor in question is not at all friendly, in fact quite hostile; and I not in a position to pursue any regulatory remedy for the situation now at hand.

* I am referring here to my long distance, contesting and awards chasing activities. Operating with the antique gear is affected but to a much lesser degree owing to use of different antennas and no need to receive signals from the most severely affected directions (most of my antennas are directional)

Coincidentally, around the time of that development there was another, also a fact which I have mentioned in prior writings. That being my introduction to building antique radio apparatus, a facet of the hobby in which I had some latent interest yet unexplored. I did not expect to be so gripped, so intrigued nor so thoroughly enthralled by it. It quickly became a passion in its own right, and like other facets of this diverse hobby I found it to be most relaxing and even therapeutic. I find I can free myself of most worry some two to three hours a day merely on the hunt for antique radio parts. Many long hours, even whole days can be completely stress and worry free during the actual building of 1920s period pieces. It may rightly be said this came as a surprise. It is not as though I have not searched for other venues to alleviate worry, relax mind and body, and nourish my soul. I have tried a great many other things both within and without this hobby, to find most do not bring the full measure of desired effects. I will be damned if I did not also find, to my utter astonishment, this new endeavor so gripped me as to bring about the selling of many heretofore treasured items so as to afford this not inexpensive activity. While there have been many luxury items I desired to own before, none so spoke to my spirit or motivated me to such a drastic move. Nay, I simply did without them.

The stage having now been set by examination of factors affecting my current situation, let us get to it. Finally! This raving lunatic is getting to the point!

Now that things are slowing down as relates to work on the premises, but having as always no shortage of anxiety relating to other matters, I find myself somewhat at a loss how to deal with life. Normally, I would at this season be spending long hours at the controls of my radio setup, rejuvenating and gathering strength for the challenges ahead. Owing to the new interference problem, that is not so this year. At a season I would normally be approaching my best of the year in terms of mental balance, I am anything but. I am constantly on edge, anxious, unsettled, worried. I do not eat right nor sleep well. I went through all of my antique parts, hoping to build a project or two this winter, but there are things lacking for any conceivable project of interest. Currently, some of those wanted items are available, but at a price — a rather high one as it were, but they are scarce and desirable antiques after all.

So then arises the desirability of making a decision. There are no, or very few, more things which I would be prepared to sell in order to fund my new passion. I can either take money from the household repair fund and buy things to continue pursuing that passion, or not. On the one hand there is the voice that says I need to stick to my convictions on fixing up the house and that any use of that money for hobby purposes would be absolutely irresponsible and unconscionable. On the other is a new voice insisting to be heard, one that says don’t be a fool; life is short and uncertain, this is a true passion, live a little and enjoy it! I confess I do not know which ultimately would be the better choice. Consequences might very well arise from either choice.

Presumably the worst that will happen if I spend some household money on a hobby is it would take longer to complete work on the house. Probably six months from a purely financial perspective, but a year would ultimately be closer to the truth since most work cannot be done in all seasons here. Assuming I remain in reasonably good physical health, that in and of itself is not a big problem. There is, however, the matter of whether I will lose respect for myself or feel I have violated an essential personal value if I were to do this. Moreover, stupidity wishes to speak, asking what if I were to find a special someone and my home is still a mess? As if there were any chance at all of that! Hell! It’s almost as if there are two of me! There is me, Paul, the sensible, intelligent, realistic one. Then there is Stupidity, the moron. I hate him!

If I make the other choice (perhaps more aptly referred to as sticking to a choice already made) then I have the problem of what to do with myself for relaxation. This might be for one winter, or it might be for years. Surely I do have things to occupy time. I have much work left to do with DLS, improving my ability to function in the world and broadening my horizons. But it is very slow, and stressful. And I see I do better at it, make more progress, when I am feeling somewhat more relaxed. Of late, with very high stress and anxiety levels, progress has mostly been in a backward direction. I have physical health matters to attend to at some point, hopefully soon. I have blogging, web site revisions, a few good online friends, and participation in a wonderful support group. But still, I do not have anything in which to become totally lost and at peace, something which speaks to my soul, refreshes me, instills in me time and time again a burning desire to carry on, to fight, to improve and preserve myself. It is, of course, not at all good that I rely on a hobby to provide these things which ought to be innate.

There is, too, an inner voice asking what if I stick to what I believe is the better set of values, devote every penny to fixing my home, only to become seriously ill and unable to enjoy life during or soon thereafter? Last I checked, life did not come with any guarantees. Should I not live a little while I can?  And yet, can playing with a hobby be considered living? Or merely a waste of time, a means of fooling oneself into believing that life had some value or meant something? Who knows! I surely do not. I am, as I stated before, confused and uncertain.