Up and down…peaks and valleys 🙃 - the Musings of Moko Bi
Hi. You may call me Moko Bi. These are my musings.
It’s been a minute, and It’s been an up and down period. But then again isn’t that just life?
I think I made good progress in my OCD battle. I have done several public gatherings, with no masks. Even an indoor one with no mask.
So while that may be a check in the box, I am not sure that’s a good metric of progress.
I think the bigger issue is getting control over this turmoil that reigns inside me, when I have to do a public interaction - or for that matter any interaction with other people period.
I am by nature an introvert, as in, I don’t have a problem being in my own company, and I have now come to realize that I also do my best work as a solo act, and I am able to best recharge in isolation - but ALL this does not mean, I am not sociable. Most people actually take me as an extrovert, because I play the part relatively well - I can flow with everyone and anyone and I enjoy every bit of the time I am being social with people… BUT, now I keep to myself more, NOT because I have stopped enjoying people, but more so, now, I have to do a lot of mental pre-work because of my mental OCD battle with pandemic initiated phobias, that until recently wasn’t an issue.
I want to return to some measure of spontaneity - while still trusting the simple precautions of pandemic living - trust the prescribed prevailing science and interventions.
So basically, feel the fear and do it anyway, while trusting the science - as much as possible.
The battle for my mind has spilled over into my physical living spaces. As I have mused earlier, I have lived a life of isolation that has precluded me from using most third parties in helping me get things done.
As a result I am in a secondary battle with nature in keeping my living spaces from being overrun - by critters and vegetation alike.
This secondary battle has very much become metaphorical to my mental health struggles. For starters, this physical / proxy battle to keep nature at bay in my living space has been forced on me, by myself of course, in my choosing isolation and rejecting third party help. To succeed in this physical battle front, I still have to contend with some of the same mental struggles - like my - incessant hand washing rooted in my misguided germ-phobia.
“So basically, feel the fear and do it anyway, while trusting the science - as much as possible.”
SO,
I have accepted a challenge to DIM-ing my way to the restoration of my living space. Doing It Myself (DIM) obviously is somewhat an excuse so I don’t involve third parties, but it’s also a legitimate ambition to see what I can do by my own head, heart and hands. I also feel if I can win this physical proxy battle, then I am all the more closer to making progress in my mental health struggles.
So, I guess in a sense, I am doing battle with the outward manifestation of my inner mental malady.
That is my long winded way of providing context to the significance of a task I just concluded… the dog house.
The dog house has never served it’s purpose - it’s never really housed a dog. She never really spent much time in it. She mostly stayed and slept wherever she felt there was a gathering of her loved ones. Selma has since passed. I do miss her. She brought a certain warmth and loyalty. The dog house eventually became a storage shed full of stuff. Overtime it also became rodent hang out.
Prior to the pandemic, I managed to do a purge and empty majority of contents in the dog house. But the structure has remained and continued to remain a rodent hangout from which they launch raids.
As part of reclaiming and repurposing space- and as part of- my self prescribed OCD recovery therapy, I have finally disassembled the dog house and plan to turn it’s previously occupied space into a composting station.
Disassembling a dog house will probably be a routine task for the average avid DIYer - but this has been somewhat challenging for me. The mere irrational thought of rodent poop debris scattered all over the ceiling of the dog house - ready to fly into my breathing air at the slight disturbance by wind gusts - has put me off for months.
BUT!
I have done it! One thought at a time, one breath after the next, one foot in front of the other, and by my hands, I took out one part after the other, and the dog house is no more. A huge physical and mental victory for me and a nice spot of space to setup a composting station.
WHY?
The lonely pandemic journey in the midst of an OCD battle has pushed me towards a lot more DIM-ing. Nope, no one or circumstances is forcing me, these are choices that I have made. Now my relatively ambitious personal goal is to create a quasi subsistence living on my patch of living space on this rock. Obviously that will mean some form of growing food at some point. Hence a compositing station!
But that’s a whole other muse! 🤓