Fall is here

Fall and my new B&W "film" for my iPhone Hipstamatic app. And times when I'm going for longer dog walks again. Actually, the last few days have been really nice. And these photos are from some 8 days ago. The weather is back to giving us at least a bit of sun each day, and I've been through another "I'm depressed, no wait, it was PMS" episode. Regrettably, it peaked while M and I were at the restaurant I last ate the night I went into labor. So I was convinced it was depression back, with the first really rainy cold day, and all the memories of the 17 hours of labor. But, it wasn't, and I'm trying fish oil pills now to see if they might lessen the mood swings every months. No more sobbing in a restaurant bathroom for me, thanks.

And the apartment keeps coming more and more together, final touches on moving around furniture. One metal bookshelf I hadn't touched in over a year finally got re-arranged, and now I just need to find family photos to put up over our work area. 

Here's to black and white photos being as morose as it gets for me this winter.

The park

The park in color

Spiders are everywhere when the fog rolls in.

Some street posts had webs in 4 directions, hanging from every available sign.

"The hill" - where we inch our way up each morning, stroller in front of us. Not a great trek for bad knees.

Summer is officially over

I just read the dooce.com post for yesterday. And there she is, writing about how seasonal affective disorder hits her every year at this time. Sad for no real reason, just sad. In September, around equinox. So I am putting in a photo I took last week, that I love the look and feel of, that no way in hell am I ever going to set as my desktop during any cold/grey months of the year.

There it is, end of summer, almost 8pm and the streetlights have just turned on.

No wonder. I have been extra vigilant with the am-I-depressed-again self assessments and even though it has been sunny most of last week, yesterday and the day before, I was in a mood. Sad, disappointed with work, unmotivated, add a pinch of bitchy. And had no idea why. And was hoping that it wasn't the call to medication again.

I think that living with depression feels like your strings are stretched a little more loosely than other people's. We zip through our day on these lines, and below us are happy fields and sad pools, and when you are depressed, your zipline just sags a bit, and your feet get caught in those pools, you slow down and then stay longer immersed in the pools. When I was on anti-depressants, my zipline was stretched tight. My feet didn't touch those pools, even when I passed them. They were there, I saw them, but my physical self didn't feel like it was caught in them.

Thank god for an ex-Mormon blogger with a good enough sense of humor and a depressive system to remind me that some of these downs are shared by many many people. There were some 60 comments on her post saying things like "Oh! I forgot about the seasonal change! No wonder I hate everything these last few days and don't know why I'm sad."

Perhaps this also explains my sudden interest in the Hipstamatic B&W expansion pack for my iPhone. Great photos, lovely focus on shape, and totally depressing. Rock on, subconscious!

In other news, L left back for home, so summer really IS over, but she left behind the coolest arrangement of 70% of our artwork on the dining room wall. We just went from no art, to most of our art being up and it feels more like home yet again.

Always wondering, not often saying it

If this is not the first blog post of mine you have read, chances are you know already that I am fairly open about my depression, about anti-depressants, and issues surrounding both. And I stopped taking anti-depressants again, after almost a year, a few weeks ago.

Like the last time I did this, there was the feeling that life was way more bearable and stable, that enough things had changed in those 10-11 months, that it was time to try without the medication. And as last time, there was a tiny fear of taking off the training wheels I'd been happily tooling around with for almost a year. How would I feel? Would I start getting angry with A again? Would I start crying again? Would it have been a mistake, and maybe show me that I'll likely be on the medication from now on, at least until my daughter it a lot older?

I probably told 3-4 people that I went of the medication. I told M, my cousin, and a few friends here in Zurich, one of whom has gone through a lot of similar ups and downs as me. They are people I trust to know this, mostly because they have been the ones I didn't get the pity looks and the "ohhhh, you're still on the medication, huh? That's too bad..." vibes from whenever I spoke of how I was feeling. Just a suggestion, if you have a loved one who is on anti-depressants, and is speaking about it openly, not with shame (even more so for those who are ashamed of it), talking to them like this does not help. It isn't nice, it isn't kind, you're not really interested in their well-being if you haven't taken the time to realize how monumentally their struggle was before the drugs and how much better they feel now. So stop it. It is not that different from "ohhh, you're still single?" or "ohhh, you are still in that relationship you hate?" No matter how nice a tone a person tries to put on those statements, they are all, still, essentially, judgmental. They show your disappointment about something in the person's life.

Aaaaanyway, the withdrawl from the Cymbalta sucked. Lots of nausea, even now once every few days, out of the blue. A nasty 4 hours of stomach cramps, maybe. Other than that, I'd love to say I didn't notice any change, but there were small ones.

As I was boarding the plane to Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I could feel a little wave of sadness about something I had been thinking or reading, when I said "goodbye" before my trip to A, I cried, at the thought of something happening to me on the flights and not coming back, and every few days, I can feel the not-so-happy hormones surround my thoughts. It reminds me of the swings in the park. When A sits on them, her feet wave freely about, high above the gravel. When I sit on them, if I don't lift my legs, my feet drag in the gravel. Being on anti-depressants was like having shorter legs for a while - I didn't have to put in effort to lift myself out of the sad gravel, and pretty much every day my feet were clear of it.

So, for a few weeks, I've felt my long swingset legs come back, and that has been ok. Sure, I wish I was a more unflappable person, but my brain doesn't work that way. And it is the reason M and I always kiss goodbye when we part in the morning, because many years ago I was keenly aware of how fragile life is and I wanted to make sure we had a proper farewell. Every day. Now it is just habit, and a nice one, even if one or both of us it upset with the other.

Then a few days ago, Monday afternoon, I had to get A from daycare early because of a holiday, I had stupidly brought her big tricycle for the park but not thought about having to corral that and the stroller on the buses and trams, she was on day 5 of a nap-strike (which is now over, thank everything!), I hadn't napped, and I almost lost it, 5 minutes after pickup, on the way to the bus. I couldn't find M on the phone or text, and his building was locked (because of the holiday) so I couldn't leave one of the vehicles there, or even go cry in his office for 5 minutes.

Shit. Shitshitshitshit. I don't want to cry. Why do I feel like crying? Do I have to go back on the meds again so soon? Can I not even handle one messy 30 minutes? Shit. Don't cry! That's dumb, not actually crying doesn't mean I'm not depressed if I then spend all my energy trying not to cry. How will I know if I have to get on the meds again? What limit of shitty behavior or mood will I set this time? I don't want to wait too long? Oh, I'm so disappointed in all of this. Crap!

It passed. I went about the rest of the afternoon, lugging that tricycle around, and then catching A as she sped across the park and down the block, and it was tiring, but fine. 

Last night I got my period. 

Big, huge, loud sigh. A once a month, weepy afternoon, I can handle. I can learn to take more easily and gently. I can cancel all plans but those that help me out. It is probably not the depression again, after all. But from now on, now that I've realized that I might have this tendency long-term, now that I've been on medication twice, I'll always wonder.

(The image is a painting by Chris Bellamy. It is already sold, but if I weren't I would want to buy it. That is what it looks like to me when I walk in the forest without my glasses on.)

Almost tomorrow's post

My laptop clock says 11:56pm. So it must be. By the time I finish writing, it will be tomorrow, so this post will count towards Friday.

Can a bar of dark chocolate really keep me up like this? I should stop experimenting with it. I don't really like the milk chocolate, and tonight, around 8:30pm, I ate a bar of dark. Like, the whole thing.

The city is finally under a dark sky, and the lights of the industrial area peek through the outlines of sunflowers and zucchini plant leaves in the garden. I'm not usually up this late. At least, not after sunset this month.

....

Hmm. Well, dang. That bar was about 3-5 oz of chocolate. Which apparently has 60-100mg of caffeine. Really? As much as brewed coffee or espresso. I guess that settles it, we need both dark and milk chocolate in the house for desserts. And I need to start eating chocolate in place of a coffee drink. Ok, maybe not that last part. So eating the bar of dark chocolate was pretty dumb.

So many things to think about when you can't sleep. Played too much of the Doodle God game, that isn't as logical as I'd like, but keeps sucking me in. You just keep trying to cross different pairs of items to create new ones, and the goal is 248 items, from zombies and superheroes, to seeds and lightbulbs and fish and sky scrapers. And money. And law. And concrete and wood. And you get a new hint to help you out every 2 minutes. Maddening in a slow enough drip that you keep going back.

Ooh, there's A, coughing and crying a bit.

And quiet again. Sweetie pie.

There is also a talk to think about, on my dissertation and on impostor syndrome, to a women physicists group next week. And the book on quantum physics and consciousness that has finally arrived at the consciousness chapter. So if there really isn't much of a self or an "I", where do all these hangups we have (low self-esteem, fear, embarrassment) come from? If the Buddhists have it right about there being no singular, constant self, why all these issues and therapists? If there is no "me" why should I care what someone else thinks of that "me" that doesn't even exist?

Which reminded me of something a counselor once told me regarding worry or sadness. That sometimes, for a chronic worrier like me, the sensation of worry comes before the assignment of that sensation to something. In other words, the body and brain worry first and then a reason is found for that worry. But since they happen so closely together, it feels like the reason comes first, followed by the physical response. I've noticed, now that I'm on a lower dose of antidepressants, that I'm a bit more emotional again. I get more teary more quickly during conflict. And I just feel sad sometimes. And for some reason, this time around, it makes sense what that counselor said - maybe because I'm really watching my moods and tracking when I should be PMS-ing, to try to see if the depression is coming back. I just feel sadness, or hopelessness sometimes. Okay, today a headline about child abuse started that feeling, but somehow I can step back more than before and sense that it isn't always caused by something. Sometimes I just feel sad. Like a hormone thermometer, that fluctuates with some chemical level. Maybe my body is just more sensitive to that kind of thing, and I need to practice not looking for reasons I feel sad.

12:15am, the webpage announces that my draft of this post is autosaved, and I'm going to try to go to sleep again.

I didn't realize this blog was so widely read

On Glee last night, they used a diabetes/insulin analogy to question how people look down on medications for mental illness. Who knew that even Glee writers read my blog? Hee hee.

A friend of mine has recently been going through the "should I start taking anti-depressants" quandry, and this issue of who we are on medication versus who we are off medication came up in our discussions. It reminds me of a reading group I sat in on for some 4-5 sessions once, in grad school. The readings were tough, about identity and self, and the discussions were intense. I mostly sat back and listened, trying to soak up as much as I could. I remember only one thing from those 10 hours. For me, that's actually pretty good.

It was on the sense of "I" or "me", a solid self inside our head. And how that "I" is constantly being constructed by who we are interacting with, who our audience it, and even down to the level of using a language (be it English or another) that has been constructed by others. Even the words each of us has available, with which we define "I" or "me", are not our own. We are not independent of culture on any level. And the notion of a "me" separate from "you" came heavily under scrutiny during those two hours. It was one of those times that make you question a lot of the things you take for granted. And in a way, although we are each alone with our thoughts and feelings, in this way, we are intimately connected to all we come in contact with.

I guess what I most take away from that class, is to question the basis for the questioning about how I might be changed (for the worse, is usually the assumption) by being on anti-depressants. That there is an immutable I out there to be changed in the first place.

In talking with my friend, the use of the word "depression" to mean generally sad also came up. If it wasn't used in everyday speech to mean just sad today, it might be easier to disentangle treating sadness from depression. And all the baggage that comes with that discussion.

Oops. Time to go pick up Baby A.

The bounty of American magazines

I love Utne Reader. And WIRED magazine, and BITCH magazine (big surprise, huh?). And I intend to enjoy every minute of Black & White Photography magazine, American Scholar magazine, and Philosophy Now magazine. And whatever other things I scooped off the rack at the Border's in Tucson last week. It was glorious, to have that much choice. And to imagine myself taking one of these periodicals with me on a tram or to the dining room window seat.

Ahhhh, a little slice of familiar. But also new.

So on my way into town yesterday I has Utne reader with me. I only read a few articles, hoping to save it for a few more trips. And one of them was about a study on increased depression and low-self esteem in kids who see more advertising. You see what you don't have, what appears to make all those glossy happy people so happy, and want it. You find yourself lacking.

And as I sit here checking out how my blonde highlights spray is working, wondering if I should have bought the red flip flops at Target, too, I think "how dumb." It isn't just kids - it is all of us. Okay, it is me. And I didn't really think how dumb.



I looked at all my catalogs. Did you even realized J. Peterman still existed?! I haven't gotten a catalog from them in over 15 years! And they are the worst. Not even photos in that catalog, but watercolor drawings, and stories about each piece. It will help you marry Prince William's brother, it will make you like that Out of Africa Movie, it will make you....a Mistress of Milan.

So I've decided that since I'd rather not need the anti-depressants for more than the essential life conditions, it is out with the catalogs, unsubscribe from all the Gap and Old Navy email lists, and I'm going on a shopping fast. Because according to CB2, even my balcony is hopelessly insufficient for the fun I'd like to have this summer. Think of it as a late lent, and I still get to eat chocolate whenever and meat on Fridays.

I've marked 40 days on my iPhone calendar, and no purchases for home or body decoration in that time. Just to take a break from all that encouragement to want to be more, better, different. I will stop shopping or even browsing.

Right after my trip to IKEA this afternoon. Hey, even dieters "start tomorrow."

Don't tell your kids they are smart

When we were back in the US for Christmas break, I picked up a book co-written by an author I like, Nurture Shock . Po Bronson had written a book about changing careers, "What Should I Do With My Life?", full of stories about people who had made huge career changes. It came at just the right time for me, as I was getting up the nerve to quit astronomy. I remember only a few things about the book (as I do with most of what I read), that I liked it, and that almost all the people in the book were forced to change careers. No one calmly sat down and wrote a list of pros and cons of being a day trader and decided it was healthier to follow their dreams of running a diner. Everyone went through a crisis - a divorce, a death in the family, a stroke or heart attack, a paralyzing depression - and this pretty much catapulted them in a new career. They could no longer do what they had been doing before. It made me realize I didn't have to be ashamed that it "took me so long to quit." Unfortunately, my will was strong enough to get me through 5 unproductive, unhappy graduate school years before a major depression hit and I couldn't continue. But that book showed me that this is the natural order of how big career changes happen to a lot of people.

Anyway, apart from recommending that book, I wanted to talk about the more recent book, Nurture Shock. It is a collection of chapters on child development, and the first chapter lands right in the middle of some of the literature I was reading for my dissertation. On praise and intelligence. The first chapter talks mostly about Carol Dweck's research on the perils of praising kids (and I extended that to adults) for their success as an outcome of being smart. Saying "good job! you're so smart" actually seems to set kids up for trouble. They start to worry that they won't be smart enough for the next task they approach and being to avoid challenges. I think of it as hearing "Each person is some fixed amount of smart. If you were smarter than this math test, the next math test could be smarter than you, and people will know you were not smart enough to pass it. You should hide how smart you are and avoid challenges because it is good to be smarter than others and bad to be less smart."

I'm not even going to get into the concept of intelligence today, but the results of Dweck's research suggest we should praise achievement by attributing it to effort - "Good job! You must have tried hard on that test." This encouraged the children in her studies to see challenges (and trying hard) as a good, fun thing. They enjoyed harder tests, even when they didn't do that well on them. In contrast, the kids who had been praised for smarts tended to try hiding any effort they had to expend.

We say "good job!" a lot around the house these days. And whenever I can, I add in something about effort. I think there is a lot to be learned from this research that applies to the culture of academia, but I'll leave that for another day.

You're only going to take that insulin for a few months, though, right?

Goodbye, 2010. Don't let that door hit you on the way out. Really, no need to come over ever again.

I started anti-depressants a few weeks before baby A's first birthday, and the celebration with helium-balloons, good friends, family Skyping in, and cake (which she held firmly in her death-grip) was fun. Life is settling down. I'm settling down.

How strange it is to hear your baby "crying at you" at 7am in the morning, and try your hardest to stay calm, not take it personally, and not break down in tears, and then, an hour after starting the medication (my body does at least this well...no side-effects), hearing her "just cry." It isn't "at" my, it isn't personal, I'm not struggling, I'm calm. Not getting any more sleep than before the medication, I realized just how much of my energy I had been funneling into JUST...KEEPING...IT...TOGETHER. Not falling apart, not crying when she did, not getting angry. If this isn't a chemical reaction (as opposed to the misconception of depression as emotional weakness), I don't know what is.

Honestly, I wish I'd gotten on the meds earlier. I feel like myself again, whatever that means. Granted, the question in my head now is, which "me" am "I"? Am I the depressed me or the not depressed me? Which me will I be as a result of anti-depressants, and which me will I be when I find some combination of sleep, taking care of myself, work and family that helps me be the mom and wife and adult I want to be? Maybe I'll be a bit less creative, but also have less of a brain that can't stop spinning. Maybe I'll be calmer and not cry as much, even at sad things. Maybe I'll be less emotionally embroiled with my kid and my husband and that will actually be a good thing.

I guess the meds/no-meds question, about who is the "real" me, is not much different than which is the real diabetic, the one on insulin who feels better or the one who isn't taking it and feel worse. They are both "me." Yet, when it comes to drugs that affect the brain we tend to think they are more fundamentally and detrimentally altering of some innate self. Already, I've gotten at least 4 different comments from 4 different people, about how soon I'll get of the meds. That is almost the first thing they've asked when I mention the anti-depressants. Not about how I feel now, but cautionary, "well, but you won't stay on them too long, right?"

Or else, what? Where does this instinct come from? You wouldn't say that to the diabetic. I guess there is still a strong sense of mental illness as different, temporary, and of medications as anti-true-self somehow.

In any case, I'm on meds, and I feel better. I feel calmer, and not like a tiny boat in a huge ocean storm, scared of capsizing every day. I'm not really angry much anymore. I don't cry much until something is really moving or sentimental. A plate of slightly overcooked pancakes, for instance, won't bring out the tears. And in the aftermath of how hard the last year has been, and how much I was afraid of being a monster who yelled at her baby and sometimes picked her up roughly or put her down and pouted (FINE! don't go to sleep! See if I care! Go play by yourself), I think I have a new outlook on domestic abuse.

I never thought I'd empathize with this category, but honestly, if it were for lack of trying, I don't think there would be even half the child and spousal abuse going on that there is. Forget my number, my main point is, I've felt angry, I've acted out against a baby who wasn't at fault, and I've then gone on to feel like a monster, guilty, ashamed, horrified, promising myself I wouldn't do it again. I tried more sleep, more me-time, eating better, getting more rest, putting notes all over the bathroom about trust and anger and reconnection, no caffeine, herbal teas for relaxing, herbal medications for relaxing, therapy (lots and lots of it, all useful in the long run, but none fixing the problem), and a bunch of other stuff. Just like the first time I was majorly depressed, it didn't help. Not enough. Which is why I'm medication. Because it wasn't a lack of trying. By the time I took the first pill, I'd tried and tried and tried, with my body, my mind, peer pressure, therapy, and everything else I could find. When I try, I REALLY try.

It is a bit like a turkey temperature button I once had that required the turkey come out of the oven 10 min. BEFORE the thing popped. Once I've come to a doctor for anti-depressants, I'm overdue for them. I've already been trying too hard to fix it. I don't come in soon enough.

And I think other people with anger issues that manifest against their loved ones are also trying hard. Don't get me wrong, I still think each one of us has the responsibility to do whatever possible to resolve the issues, be it chemical or other intervention. If I had hurt baby A, I would have been responsible. But the depression and things leading up to it were not my fault. And since nothing else worked in my case, I think it was my responsibility to start anti-depressants. But I no longer think of domestic abuse situations as confined to those who just don't try hard enough, or don't care. I think of them as people who sometimes have huge barriers in their way to their acting like they would like to. And unfortunately the ways over and around those barriers are sometimes the things that friends and family find unacceptable or disappointing (going to counseling, taking anti-depressants, choosing a calmer life and job, etc).

Even one of the therapists I've talked to in the last year displayed a surprising misunderstanding of this situation when she asked me "Can you promise me you won't hurt baby A?" Um, no. That is my point, why I'm sitting in your office, and intent on getting some medication. IT ISN'T FOR LACK OF TRYING!!! If I could promise you, I'd have promised myself long ago, and I'm a much harsher judge of myself than anyone else could be.

So, things have calmed down. M and I lit a candle the night after baby A's party and burned little note paper pieces in it. They were filled with the hardest things we went through last year that were most definitely not going to happen this year...being in painful labor, problems with breastfeeding, not knowing when the colic would end, not knowing when she'd stop waking 10 times a night, and so on. We started over. And so far, with Christmas and New Year's and travel and all, things have been good.

12 months old is coming

Just to update on the adventures of Sincere-Girl - her cape was pretty ruffled after the trip to the consulate. Didn't handle it nearly as well as she used to. Almost left a poopy diaper on the window of the woman who "helped" with the passport application. The completely condescending lady with the big gold cross on her neck. The Swiss woman who got bitchy at me when I misunderstood her directions because she didn't use the American English version of some terms. Yeah, glad we made it out of there without too much damage to the process.

Passport arrived. We can escape if we want to!

And baby A's birthday, her one-year-old, is coming. During a sleepless night, I've found myself looking up PTSD and colic. Do I actually think I have PTSD? Probably not. I don't know that I get vivid flashbacks of those early months, but I do still get queasy when I see a twin stroller. The thought of another infant makes me scared, as does getting pregnant again. I realized that as I start thinking about her birthday party, I feel a bit of the sadness I felt at Mother's Day. My heartbeat goes up a bit, in an anxious way, when I think about approaching the anniversary of her birth. That's sad.

As if we might re-live all the things that hit us so hard - the difficult labor, the C-section, the problems (and not great solutions) breastfeeding, the nights of her screaming and no sleep, the confusion and sadness of how this was supposed to be such a happy time ("oh, when she gets older you'll miss those newborn times") of bonding, and quiet cuddling and turned out to be so hard on us, on marriage, on everything.

In a way, I'm looking forward to writing over the coming 5-6 months. How horrible is that? But I am. To replace fear with calm, sadness with laughter, confusion with getting to know our beautiful little toddler better. And I hope that at some point I might feel twinges of happy and not just sad on her birthday. It has to happen eventually, right?

I think it will. I just know that this first birthday is going to be a bit mixed for me. I'm sorry about that, little one.

On a lighter note, from Baby A's first two friends' birthday parties I've learned a lot about what a room full of babies and toddlers need to have a good time: novel crackers, and a bunch of helium balloons. And each other. That, we can manage.

Always 10 steps ahead

I fast forward a lot. I extrapolate, two, five, ten steps ahead of here and now.

Sometimes it is helpful, with a hint of side-show freaky. Like when I have 6 different
errands all in my head, mapped out (usually within a few seconds) based on not having to make left turns in a car. Or the order in which to do 10 things before boarding a train, to minimize how long it will take.

I do this with some sort of "when it is all done, then I can relax" notion in my head, I think. And unless I am alone, and not responsible for anyone else but me, and in a sealed room with no phone,...it works just like that. As soon as another person or the outside world, or heck, even a flu virus, get wind of this thinking, they all rush in and ruin my perfect little world where I get that International Foods coffee moment at the end of all the effort.

And this has been causing me a lot of grief with parenting. Even knowing that the crappy fake but sweet and easy coffee moments don't happen, the 10 steps ahead stuff gets me into trouble. Like this evening.

Baby A had what I might actually call her first tantrum when she woke up from a late, much needed nap that had been really hard to get her to take in the first place. Let's just say, he didn't wake up in a good mental space. One of those, inhale sharply, pop up on all fours immediately wakings she does so often that would have benefited greatly from me popping up and rocking her back to sleep for another 5 minutes even.

Well, I didn't do that this time, because it is hard to tell, and it was late in the day, and if she slept too long then what happened to her being hungry and me needing to give her that medicated bath for her horrible rash that isn't getting better, and I didn't want to bathe her after a meal because what if she threw up in the bath and I had to start over and I'm already tired, and she doesn't feel good, and M is out of town and I should try to keep her to a schedule because I don't want her to freak out too much and make bedtime even worse for her which will make me upset and I'm on my own with this and I get angry sometimes and I so don't want to be that way tonight and....

So I was going to talk about the screaming in the bath and my decision matrix failing me at that point, but apparently my issues with the fast forward are quite adequately covered by the 5 minutes before the bath.

The more I go down this path (and I'm a long distance runner where this stuff is concerned), the worse place I get to in terms of being flexible. And being flexible seems to me to be one of the best skills to cultivate for myself with baby A. And then I'm right back in this nasty power struggle place, where I'm fighting some "good fight" to keep the baby seated in the tub even though she's tired and upset and nothing is calming down. It really bites me in the ass, this tendency. A lot right now.

And as with many other mental habits, it was really useful at some point in my life, in another situation. To get a bagillion things done in a day. Okay, it was at least helpful toward that goal. The goal itself was a bit messed up. But it is so completely un-useful, to the point of being harmful to my connecting with my kid and noticing what she needs and letting myself do that. And it is faulty reasoning, because I have NO IDEA what this kid will do next, and I'm still learning, and she's changing all the time. My intuition can be totally wrong in these situations.

So I'm trying my best to keep reminding myself to just fix the situation in the moment, without all the what-ifs and but-thens. To trust baby A instead of my fears of some dystopian, Nanny 911 family. It is amazing how quickly I can get from a screaming child in a tub to visions of a future sociopath I raised who is being hunted by the Law & Order police. Why I go to those places in my mind, I'm not totally sure. Probably something to do with the "evil all around you just waiting to tempt you, bait you, pull you down" messages I learned as a child.

Anyway, that's my "work" right now. To stop jumping out of the moment. To just stay put, and do the best things to calm down the current situation in front of me. And I find it extremely hard. Surprisingly hard, given how useful it would be to stop jumping ahead like that. Bow to your sensei.

That dude outside

Am I normal? Is what I do, want, think, believe normal? Some of us spend time comparing ourselves to others to see if we are “normal” in whatever way concerns us. In work, in child-rearing, in dressing, in talking, you name it. We think that others know what normal is, or just are normal and we might not be. But here is the thing that really surprised me about normal when I read about it for my dissertation – it is constructed by everyone around us, including us. We have such a hard time finding “normal” because it is constantly being defined and redefined around us and by us.

A friend of mine was visiting us last week and recalled when I’d first met her (we were both still pregnant) and told her I was looking for a counselor locally who could deal with postpartum depression because I thought I was at higher risk for it. She said something about the exchange like “you just acted so matter-of-fact about it and I thought, wow, she’s this totally normal woman and just brought up counseling like it was nothing strange. I can do that, too.” It reminded me of something I think is related to academic culture – a person can redefine normal by acting as if what they are doing is normal.

The few talks I’ve given about my research, I’ve spent the talk sitting down in front of the audience. I chose to do this, first, because it is not what “normally” happens at an academic talk. It is one of those little rules that everyone learns by watching and no one ever has to be told by their advisor “you stand up when you give a science talk.” It happens at journal clubs, conferences and class presentations. Humans are good at picking up on this type of, everyone-else-is-doing-it, norms. When someone breaks this rule, people use humor, ridicule, or gossip to comment on it to others and reinforce that it was a break from what is supposed to happen. “What was X thinking, sitting down during journal club? How rude/strange/flippant/naïve.”

But I think there is a power to flipping the situation around, that only a few people ever use, but can change how the action is perceived. If the person engaged in the “deviant” behavior acts as if it is normal, instead of apologizing or being embarrassed, she can start to shake up the process. Suddenly, if X comes out journal club and says to the group “I sit because I concentrate better that way and I think it makes my journal club presentations better – isn’t that the goal?” maybe the group starts to rethink the point of the standing up “rule.” The real power to redefine (or challenge) the concept of sitting as normal, though, happens if X makes that statement in a tone of voice that is completely unapologetic, maybe even slightly mystified, the way you might defend a normal behavior to someone who doesn’t understand your culture. “Um, of course I picked up that piece of litter, that’s what we DO here.” Duh. If you can hold that line, other people start to waiver a bit.

So I’m saying there is a bit of a game of “who blinks first” going on. If you can hold your line, and act as if what you’ve just done is normal (whether or not you believe it), others start to think about what you’ve done normal. Or at least more normal than before, if you’ve broken some norm of behavior within your group. Whether you are a pregnant woman telling a new acquaintance that you are looking for a therapist and that you’ve been depressed in the past, or a science instructor who announces to the class that you keep having problems working with log-normal plots, if you can say it matter-of-factly and act as if it is okay, it starts to become ok. We are all involved in defining, and redefining normal, in the groups we are part of. This is a powerful role that can help us change all sorts of things around us.

Just to be clear, I’m not advocating doing this with sexually harassing your students, or spitting into someone else’s dinner plate. And there is an extreme example in front of me as I write this. A guy who has been talking to himself – and not apologetically, or embarrassed when someone looks at him – and after speaking with the café manager, seems to be collecting the white pebbles out of the mostly grey gravel in out in front. This guy is not going by many norms shared by those around him, for whatever reason. And at some point, he may get shooed away, or arrested, if his non-normal behavior keeps going. There is a point at which you can act as normal as you want about your behavior but you’re going to get in trouble for it.