This is not a post about:
- my failed attempts to “fix” my sleep schedule on days I get up particularly late by staying up all night and going to bed early the next day
- my failed attempts to make a schedule in order to coax my motivation out of hiding
- my failed attempts to space out the unplanned and people-involving things and keep days in between to myself
This is a post about:
- what my new doctor in my new city in my new country prescribed I do next, which I will do because I generally do what doctors tell me to do as long as it is specific and tangible, so, like, “get out more,” that’s not going to happen, but “here’s your next dose and the dose after that and your new med prescription, and here’s the contact info for you to self-refer to a physio and a therapist and gyms” works out okay.
Wait, I just spoiled the post for you. My bad. The rest of this is a brief account of how my appointment at the Hampstead Group Clinic went yesterday, Friday July 4, at 4:10 PM. In case you don’t remember I registered last week, on Monday, and this Monday, after not sleeping all night because I’m special, I went there again and made an appointment to talk about my anxiety. And my hip pain. The hip pain from a wrong turn while shooting models from a lifeguard stand. (Don’t know if I’ve mentioned it; my blog is 500 erroring on me, so I can’t check.) That hip pain.
So it was pretty quick and painless! I got there, gave the receptionist my appointment card, waited for about two minutes, saw my name on a screen with the consulting room I was supposed to go to, and met my GP, who I maybe shouldn’t call my GP because I hear you get whichever GP is available no matter who’s seen you before, which checks out in view of the quick-and-effective way the appointment was conducted.
I said I had two things to talk about. The first was my hip pain: I twisted something on a lifeguard stand and it’s been hurting for two weeks. She checked my mobility after I talked about the second thing, made sure I hadn’t dislocated anything, and gave me a phone number to call to self-refer to a physiotherapist.
The second thing was, drumroll please, my anxiety. (Disappointed sounds. How do big theatrical productions convey those? Wah wah wah?) Mentioned sleep schedule, lack of motivation, lack of appetite. Doctor suggested changing my meds and so I brought up that I was thinking about that, and also about seeing a therapist. Also I had nightmares — “the new meds will help with all the physical stuff,” which was the one thing that made me go a little ‘uhhhhh’ because nightmares aren’t physical stuff, thanks — and also how about joining a gym? And how I was thinking about taking the PR route with my blog and she said I can actually get free gym classes because they’re scientifically proven to be beneficial for patients with anxiety… so free gym? Score! (Said my best friend.)
Unfortunately, I think I’m going to have to figure that out on my own, because I thought she’d written down the info along with the therapist and physiotherapist to self-refer to, and nope, it’s just that and instructions on how to go off paroxetine slowly. And a prescription for mirtiwhatsit — which makes a whole lot of sense now I’ve taken a quick look at the wikipedia page.
Going off paroxetine and starting on a new antidepressant may cause side effects like increased anxiety and palpitations, which scared the crap out of me because tachycardia is the worst, so I immediately asked if I could still use lorazepam to keep that in check and she said yes, that was fine.
I’m still not lowering my paroxetine dosage until Monday, maybe Tuesday. Maybe until I’ve made my whole rent, which should be Friday. I’m not scared. Shut up. I refuse to let unproductive tunnel vision take me, and I need to stop refreshing sites I don’t have email notifs set up for.
But hey, here’s a post! Here is a post. And the things I’ve last-minute booked this weekend (see point #3 above) are self-contained on my end: I’m getting my CV written up with Kerri’s help, and I have two modeling gigs that pay a little bit. Modeling is like photography in that I feel comfortable in my skin and like I’m doing what I love to do, but not at all like photography in that I work for x hours and then I’m pretty much done. No more photos to add to my backlog of pictures to edit!
Which, seriously, I will get to soon. And show it all to you guys. And maybe find more models. I’ve had very good experiences with models so far — it does still make me sad how self-conscious one of my swimwear models was, but then on Thursday I had the awesome chance of working with a model I could discuss that with. Feminists! — but it seems Model Mayhem and Purple Port and those sites are geared towards photographers paying models, which doesn’t super gel with me for the reasons implied in the above paragraph, and which means I’m answering more model ads than ads for photogs.
I did answer one casting call where a model was looking for a photographer to do TF shoots with to update her portfolio, and I’ve found myself in a weird situation of what do I do that can be summarized as: I could just never get back to her; I could swallow my reservations and work with her; I could make up some lie about why I don’t want to work with her anymore; or I could candidly and honestly reply that I get the feeling she doesn’t think I’m good enough to photograph her, and while I’m willing to do retouching for models who require it for their portfolios and I’m happy to get a MUA on board and so on, I’m not very inclined to put in all that work for someone who’s asking for those things as conditionals to work with me. It’s not even an ego thing, it’s like — I don’t think we see eye to eye so it would make for an uncomfortable shoot, wouldn’t it?
That’s me breaking the cycle of talking about general anxiety to talk about my anxiety over work. It wasn’t even deliberate. Well done.
Meanwhile, I caught up on my Bloglovin thing (near), completed my online registration with the practice, got a bank account (oh yeah, did I mention that? I can accept direct checkout/gift cards on Lix Hewett Design now. I’ll add it to Lix Hewett Photography as well when I’ve got a bit more things in the shop and a bit more money to rely on for order fulfillment in case someone does use direct checkout, which as far as I understand you can only take out weekly, or monthly or something), applied for two jobs, and did a whole lot of emailing as usual. And charting. But more charting and emailing awaits still.
Anyway, I will keep you posted on how my new treatment goes. Hope you’re having a nice weekend, and happy 4th of July to my American friends. I would totally wear your flag, and that’s just because it’s pretty and looks good on gymnast leotards.