urocyon

Boomer is gone.

Neighbor Dude came back last night, saying that he'd been in IIRC Manchester after his daughter was in a car crash. I'd assumed he had at least one of our phone numbers, but apparently not. The movement up there was one of his friends, who was supposed to come by and get the pup, but I never saw any sign that he tried. ND did seem concerned about Boomer, at least.

At least he's back with Neighbor Dude on a trial basis. If he and New Girlfriend's dogs still don't get along, he's coming back to us; ND even mentioned changing the microchip info over to us. (Now he definitely has a phone number.) This is encouraging in a way, since presumably NGF is at least a little better at dealing with dogs, if she has two of them. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens, much as it chafes.

I've been more than a little sad and worried. Not too surprisingly, the little booger grew on me, and I was sorry to see him go. (Unlike Max, oh my.) Here's hoping that things work out well for him, either way.

Last night, I got back on the Stepping Out of Squalor forum. I have been extremely dissatisfied (read: overwhelmed to the point of near-paralysis) with the state of things around here for quite a while, but got a shove from the way I started freaking out at Boomer's dragging stuff around and making the mess more obvious. (We did some basic puppyproofing right after he came, and you could hardly tell within a couple of days.) It was overwhelming enough already, especially knowing that we're going to have to move at some point in the somewhat near future. One of thewronghands' posts, about procrastination, also gave me a push. Yeah, more inertia. *wry smile*

I found that forum (along with the Squalor Survivors site) very helpful before. But, I got discouraged and ashamed at the clutter reappearing in spite of my best efforts, and avoided the forum. Demand sensitivity and resistance also played in there; just going there felt like it carried a set of demands I couldn't handle, when I was already kicking myself. With any luck, I can stick with it and get some encouragement and inspiration through the near-inevitable setbacks, instead of just feeling like a failure and falling into the good old "growing up with a hoarder" learned helplessness. ("All the crap just comes back, and brings friends, no matter what I do--why keep trying?!")

I'm trying hard to pace myself, and not fall into the really unsustainable old clean ALL the things! mode:

Since I've exceeded my capacity for responsibility in such a dramatic fashion, I end up needing to take more recovery time than usual. This is when the guilt-spiral starts.

The longer I procrastinate on returning phone calls and emails, the more guilty I feel about it. The guilt I feel causes me to avoid the issue further, which only leads to more guilt and more procrastination. It gets to the point where I don't email someone for fear of reminding them that they emailed me and thus giving them a reason to be disappointed in me.

Then the guilt from my ignored responsibilities grows so large that merely carrying it around with me feels like a huge responsibility. It takes up a sizable portion of my capacity, leaving me almost completely useless for anything other than consuming nachos and surfing the internet like an attention-deficient squirrel on PCP.

Ouch. Entirely too familiar, even if I am purposely trying not to bash myself over the head with the "adult responsibility, why can't I do it?" thing these days. Combine real procrastination and demand sensitivity/resistance with inertia, and things can get ugly. But, keeping in mind that I can't do everything all at once in one giant frenzy, with any luck I can avoid falling into some of this pattern. And also avoid hurting my back, going into allergy/asthma/full-body itching fits, starting snapping uncontrollably at other people, etc. I'm trying to focus on what I am getting accomplished, which does seem to help getting around the demand resistance. I'm also wanting to try more backwards planning, as mentioned recently in an LJ community.

We'll see how this works out.