while i was sleeping.

All that football was exhausting. I've been spending a lot of time trying to get my anxiety under control, and that said, I've been looking for its root cause. When I watch television, depending on what I'm watching, I feel a lot of things. I can't watch disturbing movies, or even some emotional dramas if the content is horribly upsetting. It's not even that I don't like them. If it's done well, and there isn't anything technically wrong that breaks my attention, I absorb everything. Bad guys, good guys...it doesn't matter. And once I absorb it, it's as if someone gave me an emotional transplant. The same goes in my everyday life. Every encounter is the same. If you feel sad, I feel sad and want to fix it immediately. If someone is homeless, I observe their position, their injuries, the discomfort and hunger, and then I literally feel all of it from the inside out.

I know that this is empathy. I'm in a constant state of emotional overload, and my walls are thin. I think over the past year I developed a feeling that if I could just become invisible, I wouldn't cause people to feel so much, which in turn would help me feel less of everything overwhelming. Off and on, I think I knew that I shouldn't be making myself invisible, so I'd try harder--almost force myself to get out there and be someone who isn't.

Anyway.

I landed a job this week at a college. I start next week, and having been around a few of the classrooms and in some of the halls, I feel happy. Even if I'm not taking any classes, I'm thrilled to be around all of that education and stuff. I love to learn. I hope to take a few lessons from the job, and maybe even a few classes at a later date. First I need to get a handle on the job. A better handle on my life, even. But for getting this particular job, I am proud. This means no more selling insurance, less unemployment, and a fresh start. It's not that I didn't like insurance. I knew it, and well. I couldn't stand working with the customers, and I think now it was the stupid empathy.

Over the last several months, I kept hoping I'd wake up one day and all of my health problems would vanish...that I'd get to start over. That's not going to happen, so I'm going to have to start over now, and hope all of these nasty symptoms begin to dissipate over time. Figures, I get empathy, but no patience.

I just hope I'm well enough to start this new thing without too much additional discomfort. And if I'm not, that's o.k., too. If I've learned anything on unemployment it's that I can do more than I thought I could with a lot less of everything. 


"Wealth, in terms of dollars and so forth, could be counted up, because dollars were finite. It doesn't make any difference how many dollars you have--at a certain point you only have dollars. You start with finite, you end with finite." -Mike Nesmith