About Me

Categories: About Me

L is for Loneliness

It’s a common question asked of people who live alone: Don’t you get lonely?

I’m not immune to loneliness. It happens to me from time to time. If I have a weekend with no plans, I get this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach, and then I start imagining never having plans ever again, losing all my friends, and becoming a hermit. (I love catastrophizing!)

But loneliness is not something I struggle with all that often. If I do feel it creeping in, I know the antidote is to make plans with friends or figure out a fun way to fill up my time by myself. Maybe I’ll take myself to a coffee shop and read my book, or find a used bookstore to explore, or invite myself over to my mom’s house for a swim.

Generally, though, I love living by myself. As I wrote earlier this week, I have no shortage of hobbies to keep me busy, and I have two very cute four-legged friends who make sure I never feel like I’m totally alone. If I start getting a little lonely as I’m reading on the couch on a Friday night, all I have to do is reach out and pet Lila’s soft belly or find Eloise, who will always trill at me whenever I talk to her.

Sometimes, as I’m driving home, knowing I’ll be going home to an empty apartment (empty of other humans, that is), I think about how I would feel if I were coming home to someone else. Or maybe I’m not driving home alone, but someone is sitting next to me in the passenger seat.

I gotta be honest here: Nothing about that scenario is appealing to me. I love going home to an empty apartment! I love knowing I don’t have to worry about anyone else when I get home and can do whatever the hell I want. (And listen, yes, I know you can do that when you have a partner, but still. It’s different when there’s another person in your home, even if it’s someone you love deeply and want them to be there.)

Maybe one day I will decide it’s time to get back on the dating apps and find someone to share my life with, but right now, I’m really content with living alone and being alone. I am a Super Introvert and need tons of alone time to recharge my batteries. And while I have found ways to combat loneliness, sometimes I just need to let the feelings come. Loneliness happens to all of us, and it’s okay to just accept that today’s going to be a shit day and hope that tomorrow is better.

I’m grateful that it’s not something I deal with too often, though.

Categories: About Me

K is for Kids

I am a single woman who is swiftly approaching the last year of my thirties. I am childless, have never been pregnant, and I do not want to be a mother.

This isn’t the way I thought my life would pan out, though. Here are my thoughts on becoming a mother throughout the years:

Childhood/Adolescence

I loved baby dolls and Barbies and taking care of things. I grew up in an evangelical church where it was burned into my brain that I should desire marriage (heterosexual marriage, of course!) and motherhood. For me, it was never a question of if I was going to be a mother. It was when. I imagined marrying a strong Christian man, someone I chastely courted in my early twenties, and having a house full of children. In fact, in fifth grade, we had to write this vision of our future, and my future was being married with four daughters. (I was also a veterinarian in this dream. Somehow I managed to get through vet school and have four babies by the time I was 30.)

I didn’t date much in high school, but I wasn’t worried about what that meant for my future marriage prospects. I was just waiting for my future husband, and he would get to me at the right time. I didn’t need to date a bunch of toads to get to him! I would be content on my own, and I would know when I met him finally.

Young Adulthood

I also didn’t date very much in college. This is also when I started questioning some things about my faith and feeling very disillusioned by youth groups. I never felt like I really fit in, and I struggled to find my people. In college, I worked at a preschool and got a front-and-center look at what it’s like to be surrounded by children. Y’all, children are exhausting. They need constant care and attention. I would end each day feeling utterly worn out. I joked that it was “great birth control,” and it made me start wondering if I really wanted children, or if I just thought I did because it had been ingrained in me.

Still, I thought having my own children would be very different than overseeing a classroom of two-year-olds. And it would be! So I was still on the hunt for my future husband and still very much desired motherhood. Around this time, my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) had their first baby, and he was perfection! I loved him so, so much and knew I wanted one of my own.

Adulthood

As the years passed and I still had yet to find forever love, it started feeling less and less plausible that I would have children. Sure, I could do it on my own if I wanted to, but I never desired motherhood so deeply that I was willing to spend the money, time, and effort to take that path. If I was going to do something as big as having a baby, I wanted to have a partner by my side. And oh yeah, this is also when I began to fully understand my queerness and realized that maybe it wasn’t a future husband I was waiting for, but a future wife.

Present Day

These days, I have no desire for motherhood. I don’t feel like I missed out on something, even though I know if it had happened for me, I would have been a wonderful mother. My path to my child-free existence is different than some people’s because it wasn’t as if I never wanted to become a mother. It’s just something that never happened for me, and I learned to embrace the freedom that comes with this life. I am happy with where I ended up. I am content in knowing that my babies are two little cats who think I’m their entire world. Who knows if I would have even had kids if I had gotten married young? I mean, I probably would have, because it wasn’t something I questioned at all when I was younger, but there could have been many obstacles in my path.

I’m content that this is the way my life turned out, even if it’s not the path fifth-grade Stephany could have ever envisioned for herself.

Categories: About Me

J is for Juggling

Something I’m constantly learning and relearning is that I cannot do all of my hobbies every day.

I’m not someone who wants to maximize every second of my day and be super productive. We talked about that yesterday: I struggle with inertia and need to set up my day in a way that works for my neurospicy brain.

But let’s take a look at my array of hobbies:

Reading
Blogging (writing blog posts, reading blogs, leaving comments on blogs, responding to comments on my own blog)
Podcast (creating episode outlines, setting aside a few hours every month for recording, and running our Instagram account)
Novel writing
Investing in my relationships
Exercise/movement (these days, it’s only a 30-minute walk, but it’s something I have to work into my schedule every day)
Online admin (reading my array of email subscriptions, managing my personal email, etc)
Watching TV/coloring (a very passive hobby, but one that resets my brain)

On top of my hobbies, chores need to be done, and an apartment needs to be constantly tidied even though I’m the only one who lives here. I have a set of weekly and monthly tasks that I need to do. And then there are just the one-off tasks that pop up every week: making doctor’s appointments, following up on emails, scheduling Target orders because suddenly I’m out of all my household supplies all at once.

And, oh yeah, I also have a full-time job that has to take priority Monday- Friday.

I know this is very much a first-world problem, and I know other women have a lot more on their plates with work travel and young kids and more commitments. (So basically, I don’t know how anyone with kids gets anything done. Where do you find the time???)

What I know is that I am constantly juggling my hobbies and other priorities, and something always has to fall short. Last week, it was reading; I stayed on top of NaBloPoMo blogging and commenting, but I probably read 50 pages of my book all week. This week, I’m trying to bring reading back (because goddammit, I need to finish The Calamity Club so I can move on to something else!), but that means I am way behind with blog commenting. (I’m sorry for all of my delayed comments.)

I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me plan my days, taking into account my struggles with inertia and my low energy reserves, and it has helped me understand that I have to pick and choose my hobbies every day. For example, while my goal was to finish my novel by the end of this year, that’s not going to happen because I only work on it once a week during my Saturday morning writing date (and these days, writing blog posts is taking priority, much to my writing partner’s chagrin). I could tell myself I need to write 500 words every day, but that means something else has to fall off my priority list, and right now, I’m not willing to read less, blog less, or comment less.

The thing is, I would rather have too many hobbies than too few. I never want to be bored with my life, and I can honestly say I am seldom bored. There’s always something I could be doing! If anything, sometimes I have to tell myself it’s okay if I keep my laptop closed one night and use my free time to watch TV and color, rather than being productive.

At the end of the day, I’m glad I am constantly juggling all of my hobbies and trying to figure out how to fit it all in. What a wonderful “problem” to have!

Categories: About Me

I is for Inertia

Inertia is one of those characteristics of the Enneagram 9 that I don’t like to spend too much time thinking about.

Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s something I spend far too much time thinking about and very little time vocalizing. Being a human adult woman who struggles with inertia feels… kinda ridiculous.

Inertia, at least the way I’m talking about it, is the difficulty with starting tasks, stopping tasks, and transitioning from one task to another. It could also be called executive dysfunction and is very common in those with ADHD.

I don’t think I have ADHD (at least, I didn’t have any signs of it as a child), but I definitely struggle with executive dysfunction.

Some of the ways it manifests for me:

I am not someone who can wake up and immediately start my day. I need at least 15 minutes on the couch with my coffee and my phone, but if I don’t set a timer, those 15 minutes could easily turn into 30 or even 45 minutes.
I don’t mind the process of showering, but I really hate the transition of getting into the shower, and once I’m done, I want to throw on clothes and then sit on the couch to scroll more.
Getting through my morning routine is a struggle. Partly because I have a very involved morning routine that also involves tasks like emptying the dishwasher, dealing with my CPAP machine, and tidying up my apartment, and partly because the morning time includes so many transitions that my brain crashes out.
If I don’t have a solid plan for my day, where I know what I’m supposed to be doing from one hour to the next, I tend to flounder. I struggle to figure out what needs to take priority during my workday and take far too many breaks. Without structure, even knowing what I should be doing doesn’t necessarily translate into actually doing it.

To people who don’t struggle with inertia, this all may sound like laziness or excuses. But it’s an actual neurological thing that people do struggle with, and I wanted to write about it today to give people a glimpse into what it’s like to have this type of executive dysfunction. I’ve spent a lot of time working through schedules and time-management strategies to figure out how to set up my life in a way where I can be productive and get things done, even though it doesn’t come easily for me. (And truthfully, my AI agent has been instrumental in helping me figure out the right strategies. Hell, it even helped me come up with the term “executive functioning” to understand why mornings are such a struggle for me. It’s not because I’m lazy or useless. It’s just because my brain works a bit differently and that’s okay.)

A lot of my strategies are similar to those with ADHD, but here are some of my biggest wins:

Timers – I use an app called Spin the Wheel for my timers. I created a wheel with different time increments, ranging from 3 to 15 minutes. Whatever I spin is how long I have for a transition break, or how long I have to work through my morning or evening routine before I get a break. It gives me a little structure when I’m struggling to get moving, but also a small treat when the timer goes off so it feels like I’m working toward something. (I have a separate “Breaks” wheel with little treats for myself, like coloring, stretching, or reading an email subscription.)
Structured planning – While I still haven’t found the system I love wholeheartedly, I have been doing a lot of experimenting with bullet journaling because it allows me to set up my day in a way that works best for me. I need to know exactly what I’m doing and when I’m doing it and what order I need to do it, but I also need the ability to pivot when things start going south. Bullet journals offer great flexibility for that!
Body doubling YouTube videos – Hat tip to Suzanne for telling me exactly why I love these videos so much! “Work with me” and “study with me” videos are super popular on YouTube, and I’ve found a few creators I really love (Rose Tanaka and Zitha Nim) who make awesome videos. Whenever I really need to lock in and focus at work (or get a blog post written!), I pull up one of their videos, and it helps so much. (Body doubling is the process of working side-by-side with someone, or working virtually in my case, to help you maintain focus and finish tasks.)

So, inertia. I wish I were someone who could be super productive without all sorts of tactics and timers and task managers to keep me focused, but I’m not. If you also struggle with inertia, I’d love to hear any tactics you use! And if you have someone in your life who struggles, I hope this gives you some insight into what life is like for us neurospicy people.

Categories: About Me

E is for the Enneagram

People have strong feelings about personality frameworks, and I wouldn’t say that I disagree with some of those assessments. What I will say is that some personality frameworks are better than others and, to me, the Enneagram is the best.

I learned about the Enneagram when it became all the rage on Instagram in the years before the pandemic. I read The Road Back to You in 2018, and since then, there have been oodles and oodles of Enneagram books written to help people find their type and explore the ins and outs of their personality. (Suzanne Stabile is my favorite Enneagram teacher, if you’re looking for a gateway!)

A lot of people take a test to find their Enneagram type, which is fine, but I think it’s better to read about all nine types and see which one speaks to you most. By “speaks to you,” I mean the one that makes you crawl out of your skin because it feels like someone took your brain and put it on the page.

At least, that’s the way I felt when I read about the Enneagram 9, which is my Enneagram type. The nine is called the peacemaker. We are non-confrontational; we go with the flow; and we want everyone around us to be happy. And that’s because we fear that expressing our opinions or standing up for ourselves will make the people around us mad, and when people are mad at us, they will leave.

There are many reasons why I love the Enneagram so much, and the primary reason is that it has helped me grow so much as a person. Personality frameworks do not exist to put us in a box. They are there to show us why we do the things we do, and help us understand ourselves better. The cornerstone of the Enneagram is our core fears, desires, and motivations. By understanding what scares you the most (is it not being seen as successful, is it feeling helpless, is it abandonment?) and what actually motivates you (is it unity or feeling free or being morally right?), you discover a deeper layer to your sense of self.

I’ve written before about how learning about my type has helped me grow as a person. It’s helped me understand that I am motivated by unity and peace, to the point where I will sometimes let people walk all over me. But now I know that I do that, and I can set boundaries to fight against this inclination. And I can find the good in my peaceful nature. It means I am a calming presence to my friends, and someone they feel they can come to with problems and I won’t judge them. It means I’m happy to go with the flow, won’t make a fuss, and don’t need too much to be happy and satisfied. I’m the friend who won’t ask a lot of you, and while I definitely have to remind myself that it’s okay to ask my friends for help, I also like my low-key nature.

I’d be remiss to write a whole post about the Enneagram and not talk about the podcast I started with my best friend, Bri, in 2022. We started The Friendship Paradox to discuss what it’s like to be best friends with wildly different personalities. How different? When we took the Big 5 personality quiz, the results measured our extroversion on a scale of 0 – 100%. I scored 6% and Bri scored a whole-ass 100%! We are not ambiverts in the least. We are on opposite ends of the introversion/extroversion spectrum! Anyway, we started our podcast with a strong focus on personality frameworks and all the ways our differences show up in our lives. And now, we’re finishing up our fifth year and still going strong! Feel free to give it a listen if you want.