The State of Kate: Beginning of Summer 2020

Why is it always so much more difficult to work on the things I "should" be doing than it is to figure out something even more interesting that I "shouldn't" be doing, and start that instead?

WHY?

Like, even with projects that are fun! I have a to-do list right now that is full of sit-on-my-butt-at-a-computer tasks, which I normally typically classify as "fun."

But, well, this morning I got a little bit sidetracked with the 1869 Census for Frenštát... I went through half of it (409 pages) and... well... attached as many of the images to FamilySearch Family Tree as possible.

I mean, the census itself lists, "do Ameriky v roce 1872" with the passport application number. Plus, there are many, many dozens of my own family members. Doing this was extremely satisfying as well as extremely... not related to anything else on my to-do list, except only a bit vaguely.

Like, one search strategy to getting a bit closer to solving the Henry Heine case is to try to find Anna Svoboda/Macha in Trojanovice or Frenštát in the 1869 census. So... while I'm looking there... might as well...

... and now I want to compile a list somewhere of all the emigrants to Texas from these towns, with SOURCE CITATIONS to back it all up.

So now I'm done complaining, and I'm going to get back to what I was doing.

Oh yeah. State of Kate:
I'm doing extremely well. I feel happy, motivated (well - as you can see from the above rant - I'm still human), and in control. Life is good.

I mean, well, life is pretty objectively awful with the current events and the state of the world. But the internal state of Kate? I haven't felt this great in years. I'm on the right dose of the right medication, which is obviously not the *utmost* ideal scenario (which would be to not need it at all), but it is definitely the right choice now. After struggling through some slightly annoying GI side effects, my gut has decided not to rebel, that this medicine is worth it. I think my body may have fully adjusted to this; I feel only slight side effects. The benefits far outweigh the cons.

This summer is going to be a real challenge here at home with 5 kids, but I think things will actually turn out okay.

I hung out with the missionaries in the Family History Center today. I really, really love them, both the sisters and the elders. Actually, I have gotten to know like 15 different people, since there are like 5 sets of 3 missionaries that go to the Ashworth building. My stake technology specialist is the only one who has the authority to add a device to the wifi - so he came over to set up the chromecast. Finally. After I had nagged him all week. I'm not sure if he was able to do it or not in the end - I had to leave beforehand. I've loved working with the missionaries. I love teaching them how to use FamilySearch. I love their enthusiasm and kindness.

I would not have been able to serve a mission, even if I had wanted to go. I would either have been sent out and then sent home early for mental health problems (severe anxiety), or maybe, if I had been lucky, they wouldn't have ever called me in the first place. I realize now that it's not an experience I would have missed out on - I wouldn't have had it at all. I would have been a really, really bad missionary, too. Like... it would have been so hard if I had been with an obnoxious companion. I would have really struggled, especially at age 19, with living with certain kinds of personalities, following arbitrary rules, and dealing with strange cultural weirdness from my church. I am probably an exception to the norm; one of the things that had built my testimony and faith in the restored gospel the most, that the church is what it says it is, that the prophets and pioneers were who they said they were, is researching their flaws. In detail. In historical records. Sugarcoating nothing. Deep diving into the weird world of polygamy, which is often really messy. I know for myself that these people, these experiences, these events, are true. I know that the Book of Mormon really is a translation of a real ancient record of a people that lived in the Americas. It is a solid companion witness to Jesus Christ's godhood. My own faith has grown because of my fascination, obsession, and tangential explorations into church history - and my own history.

Maybe I would never have been a missionary at the age of 19-21, but I am confident that I am "good enough" as whatever kind of missionary I am today, just by being my own genuine self. I've told Danny that this medicine helps me to feel like I'm in a protective bubble, that I'm not completely surrounded by danger at all times anymore. Danny says it seems like it's more like I'm not constantly in chains anymore. Like... I'm free. I can understand what he means. It's kind of strange to introspect on this fact, but I remember recently talking about and thinking about how worried I was to share any feelings of faith - no matter how remote - because I didn't want to be misunderstood or worse, rejected. I don't really... feel that now. At all. I just feel... fine. Not worried about it. I obviously would prefer to not be misunderstood or rejected, but it's not really an influencer in how I choose to be, or even what I choose to say. Like, it would not prevent me from sharing the thoughts and feelings in my heart if I felt they were right to share. It really is like my anxiety was a ball and chain, keeping me in this very narrow radius of action at all times. Interesting.

One final note: I have noticed that I am slightly less creative on these meds. Like, I could sometimes get into a huuuuuge fury/rage and just - attack my keyboard tap tap tap tap tap tap tap and write scathing lines. Like, I could channel all kinds of energy into writing. There's MANY scathing lines possible to be written about Dune, but I don't really even look forward to writing a mild review, which is a bit odd. Anxious Kate is all about that, and without my anxiety I am just... a lot less vicious. A LOT less angry. So that tradeoff means I'm also a lot less creative in some ways. On the other hand, since I have more energy and I'm more excited about life, that also means I'm more creative in someways. Like, even though I've been procrastinating doing so this whole time, I really do feel an itch to finish some of those other projects on my list.

Here's a curated version of said list:
- Write Dune review
- Fix signup.com reminders for FHC
- email Claudia
- buy that ghost book for Jane
- pick out a couch for the TV room and buy it
- email Rob
- email or text Andrea
- Figure out if we have a spot in daycare for August
- buy a 23&me test (yeah. I decided I really want to know my health horoscope. haha)
- set up ChalTec for next week
- mail back library books
- Write Dune review <--- haha, this literally is on there twice...

Time to get to that review.

State of the Kate, October 2019

Wow, what an awesome week! Such a whirlwind, and so exciting! Basically, I feel totally rejuvenated and re-energized in many of my most ambitious projects. What happier result there could be, I don't know, except *gasp* discovering that lots of people like me, admire my work, and best of all, share my same nichey, quirky interests.

So here's an update on the goals I set for Q3 (even though that ended like...almost a month ago). If I crossed it out, I finished it. If I italicized it, I've since revised it.

1. Grad School Preparations.
2. ENGL 510
3. Maintain a Strict Morning and Evening Routine for My Mental Health
4. Talk with someone on the phone who is not Danny every single day
5. Writing
6. Grundbücherbuch
7. CGSI marketing goals
8. CGSI Lincoln Conference preparations
9. Asynchronous Book Club
10. Čeština A3.5
11. Kate Expectations
12. My Calling
13. Cousin Book
14. Home Church
15. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon
16. Czech Out Your Ancestors
17. That should be a movie!
18. Cookbook Project
19. Classics
20. Financial Aid
21. Wean Joey

Here is a non-exhaustive list of my personal goals for now until the end of the year, in order(ish) of priority:

1. Running : success looks like me running a race every month, and basically every day except Sundays. If I am in pain, I will have to cross train.

2. Meditation : I was recommended this app, which I use and really love. It's super calming.

3. Getting enough sleep : egh. Lifetime struggle.

4. Dieting : ...and this one is not much fun either. Success looks like continuous effort at this unfun task.

5. Slaying my emails every single day! This is revised from talking on the phone; that comes easily. Responding to emails does not. But it's very important to do.

6. Using google calendar : success looks like me adding my goals and events in the calendar and consulting with it frequently. Life is better when I know what the heck is going on.

7. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon : success looks like me finishing answering all my questions from last year and assembling it all into a print on demand book before the end of the year.

8. My Calling : success looks like implementing the 2020 calendar, making sure every unit in the stake has been trained on the leadership plan, creating the reminders and bulletin information for the ward's meetups and attending them. It also looks like continuous, steady effort to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and just do it.

9. Czech Out Your Ancestors : success looks like writing some back posts so that I can have blogged continuously for the past year. It also looks like creating and implementing a content calendar for my facebook page. And there are some other top secret plans in the works, but I don't want to... squelch them... by allowing them to see the light of day too soon.

10. CGSI marketing 2020 goals : totally rejuvenated where this is concerned. Success looks like scheduling our facebook meetings, adding 15-20 things to the agenda to discuss, and not missing the Nov and Dec meetings.

11. Home Church : success looks like both me and my kids reading the entire New Testament before the end of the year. We are somewhere in 1 Thessalonians.

12. Grundbücherbuch : success looks like continuous effort plugging along at the final edits. Maybe we get through chapter 15 by the end of the year. We are in 12 right now. There are 19.

13. Čeština A3.5 : success looks like working my way through the entire book before the new year. Yeesh.

14. Narození a smrt v české lidové kultuře : success looks like continuous DAILY effort on this project. It has become very important because it would be just so fantastic if... well, another dream to avoid squelching.

15. CGSI article writing for Naše rodina : success looks like finishing (and starting. Haha) my DNA article and having a running list of articles to write. It looks like being published in every issue from now... forward.

16. CGSI 2021 Milwaukee Conference Proposals : success looks like submitting 10-15 proposals to this con.

17. Kate Expectations : success looks like finishing my poems and publishing a print on demand book for my nerdiest of nerd friends to enjoy for Christmas. Basically, this project has a deadline of the end of November. So Thanksgiving.

18. Asynchronous Book Club : success looks like me cataloguing and writing SOMETHING about all the books I read this year.

19. Cousin Book : success looks like me reaching out for contact information from all 50 cousins who I will see at the funeral next week. It also looks like getting some concrete information about this stuff from my mother in law about the other side of the family.

20. That should be a movie! : success looks like preparing and uploading the stuff we already prepared for a Jan 2020 release. It also means recording 2 or 3 new episodes.

21. Cookbook Project : success looks like writing a simple outline.

22. Classics : success looks like reading 3 classic literature books out loud with my kids before the end of the year. Audio books allowed!

23. NaNoWriMo with my kids (they are doing the 10k version. I may, as well. haha) : success looks like Jane, Dan, John, and Lukas all writing ~350 words/day for the month of November. It also looks like me keeping up with them. We will just all publish these things as print on demand books.

24. ENGL 510 : success looks like working my way through the book and answering all the questions briefly.

25. Python : success looks like completing the MOOC I am in, finishing the book I'm reading, and...cough cough... blogging about the learning curve in a tbd blog.

27. Corpus Linguistics MOOC : success looks like relistening to all the lectures, participating in the forums, and at least skimming all the articles.

State of Kate, Q2 2019

To the one or two souls who read this blog sometimes, here's an update on the State of Kate. 

I've had a really rough spring. I guess you could say it's been really rough since Joey's been born. I guess you could stretch that further and say it's been rough since I have been pregnant. So...it's been a little bit shy of 2 years of it being generally "rough." It fluctuates, but there's just this general malaise that lingers and is really unpleasant. 

It looks like things are about to change drastically in that regard, so woohoo!

Here is an update on all the goals that I had made for myself in May/June. 

1. Apply to Grad School : Everything is done except that I need to finish my writing sample, take the GRE, submit my scores, and pay the fee. But all the other paperwork is done, which is great!
2. Garden 2019 : I planted it. Lots to say about this, but in a nutshell, I've decided that while I'm in grad school, we are going to sod over the vegetable garden, dismantle the trellis, and not have one.
3. Take the GRE : I've been prepping for it a lot, especially the past week. I was supposed to take a mock test this morning (it was in my scheduled study plan) but Danny convinced me that it would be better for my health if I slept in as late as possible; that I'm going to do just fine, and so I should stop stressing so much about it. It will be okay if I just put it off a bit.
4. Taxes : Long since finished.
5. Friends : haha. This is such an embarrassing "goal." It is also really difficult to quantify. I decided that in Q3, I will restate the goal to be a little less stupid.
6. Grundbücherbuch : Waiting on edits from Lukáš. 
7. CGSI : I totally failed at all of these goals. But they still want me involved, by some miracle. So, yeah. Onward.
8. Get Skinny Again : weaning is the answer to making all the weight just fall off. Basically, when I'm not breastfeeding, I feel about half as hungry. 
9. Boston Temple Painting : It's at an okay stopping place for now.
10. Čeština : lots of false restarts, none have really materialized.
11. Czech Out Your Ancestors : I didn't do anything and didn't even feel guilty about it.
12. Exercise : I've been walking and running consistently for the past week or so; it significantly affects my mental health. Will keep it up.
13. Joe's Wedding : it was awesome!
14. Kate Expectations : I've written a lot of pathos-laden poetry for it. I think there's about 50 poems so far? 
15. My Calling : finally, finally, after a very long time of waiting, I have some direction. I have a checklist of items to do, and I'm working through them. That's a good feeling.
16. Cousin Book : I keep meaning to start this thing, but I haven't so far.
17. Home Church : We do this consistently, and well. 
18. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon : I'm behind, but I did type up all the questions and I've been slowly attacking them.

For Q3, I am going to revise my goals. Here they are:

1. Grad School Preparations - Take the GRE, finish applying to graduate school, get accepted, enroll in classes

2. ENGL 510 - this is a prerequisite class for many of my other classes which is only offered in the Fall. I will take it in Fall 2020, but I want to be able to prove that I am capable enough to take other classes in Spring 2020. I bought the textbook and plan to work my way through the exercises. Also, it's really fun. 

3. Maintain a Strict Morning and Evening Routine for My Mental Health

I think my days would be smoother if I were to be able to follow a routine (not necessarily on the dot by time, but generally in the same order every day). Basically: 

Morning

- wake up early

- go for a walk/run (this is crucial to do early because a. it's hot and b. I don't like doing it with five kids)

- read scriptures

- work on Czech

- take care of household stuff (dishes, breakfast, chores, laundry, etc.)

Evening

- get in bed at 10:30

- lights out by midnight (or earlier). This will allow me a generous amount of time to read, which I really love!

4. Talk with someone on the phone who is not Danny every single day. This is easier to quantify than "friends." It's also going to be hard. But probably fun.

5. Writing - I want to write 2,000 words every single day. I have a jillion writing projects in the works. It doesn't really matter which one I work on, but I want to reach that wordcount quota, at least for Q3. Then we'll reevaluate. I can (but don't have to) start writing with a "warm up" exercise. 

6. Grundbücherbuch - keep plugging along. I would like to get through chapter 15 but a lot of this depends on my collaborator.

7. CGSI marketing goals - I made a list. I guess I will start with that.

8. CGSI Lincoln Conference preparations - Quite a lot to do there.

9. Asynchronous Book Club - More on that later. Or maybe not. It's almost too nerdy to speak of. 

10. Czech A4 - finish it! Design A5.

11. Kate Expectations

12. My Callin

13. Cousin Book - have a list of all of my cousins, Danny's cousins, and their contact information by the end of Q31

14. Home Church - keep pressing onward

15. A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon - catch up completely, start gathering stuff for self-publishing it as a journal-y type book, because why not. That's fun.

16. Czech Out Your Ancestors - start blogging there again, and update the Facebook page

17. That should be a movie! - finish season 1, finally! Publish this sucker :-) Record episodes for season 2, streamline the process a bit.

18. Cookbook Project - this has been in the works for about 6 years. I should actually sit down and DO it. I might want to find a collaborator.

19. Classics - start reading classic lit with the kids. We have been doing this for a while, but I want to continue, and maybe make a list of it somewhere.

20. Financial Aid - apply to lots of grants and scholarships for graduate school. Maybe create some kind of quota. 

21. Wean Joey - I'm on day #4 of that. I've been so dizzy today. It feels kind of horrible. But in other ways, it's like I took a giant chill pill. I feel SO much less anxiety, it's almost comical. <-- this goal is the reason why I think I might be capable of completing (or getting a very big head start on) some of these projects in the next three months. First of all, the regained time. But most of all, the regained self. I can already feel my body starting to feel more normal again. Normal hunger levels. I didn't have a panic attack in four whole days. My hands didn't shake. I feel like I look skinnier (though that might be an illusion). I feel much, much more relaxed. Just...dizzy. But that will go away with time. 

It also feels sad, but it was The Right Thing To Do, and I really value doing the right thing, so I'm not going to waste my time crying about it.

Very much.

The State Of Kate: Spring 2019

As usual, my friend Tom was right. He said that he thinks I am continually processing my emotions, that basically that is what I do constantly. That is the State of Kate.

And he's right; that is what blogging is for me: a tool for processing my feelings. I sometimes feel myself getting a kind of urge to write that cannot be ignored. It's usually when there's some kind of unsolvable problem, or feeling, or issue - and then I spend 20-30 minutes writing and it's like, a great relief.

Maybe it's a relief because the act of writing means that there is a possibility - a shred of hope - that somebody might "get" what's going on inside of me? I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe it's just a familiar habit. An ironed shirt :-)

I wrote a lengthy essay about two weeks ago about how much I dislike the phrase "processing feelings". I called it "Processing processing feelings." But it is too personal to share, somehow, even for me.

Lucky for you, I guess.

***

I have the urge to write right now. I have this very real problem of too many projects and too little time in which to do them. It's typically like that to some degree, but it's ridiculously like that right now because:

Head Lice.

Hours and hours and hours and hours...and hours. And hours.

It is so stressful for me that I have developed five (!!) total styes in both the top and bottom eyelids of both eyes. They are quite painful and I look rather ragged, like I'm not getting enough sleep. Though I am, at least quantity-wise, if not quality-wise.

Last week I had at least 5 nights in a row of terrible nightmares, many which involved me having to convince unwilling subjects to allow me to comb their hair with nit-combs, immediately upon which I found dozens of large swarming bugs all over my hands. Or dreams about bugs creating large, sticky, nasty, gooey messes all over my house. Or dreams about falling down an interminable roller coaster, backwards, upside down, sideways. Or dreams about dozens of tribal women almost chucking their helpless babies off a cliff (!!). Or dreams that I was in school again and had to learn an entire four years worth of math in about two months. I was able to sort of conquer that dream by dividing the textbook with hundreds of little sticky notes.

So this is my attempt to divide my projects with a few "sticky notes." Actually, it's me retyping what my husband and I already planned together. I was feeling so stressed about this over the weekend that I begged him to sit and plan this with me. He hates planning, so it was really kind of him to do it anyway.

Kate's Projects:

1. Apply to Grad School
2. Plan and plant Garden 2019
3. Take the GRE
4. Finish 2018 Taxes
5. Project: Friends
6. Grundbücherbuch
7. CGSI Volunteering
8. No More Lice
9. Boston Temple Painting
10. čeština
11. My genealogy blog
12. Project: exercize and get skinny again
13. Joe's wedding and other various Summer Plans
14. Kate Expectations (my 2019 poetry anthology)
15. My Temple and Family History calling
16. Cousin Book
17. Home church
18. A year of Questions in the Book of Mormon

Those are all the projects I can currently handle. Danny thinks there are too many. I could probably fill this list with many other worthy projects that I've dreamed up and even started. But this is what will have to suffice.

I put time limits on each of them. Some were harder than others, because like, "Czech" isn't really something that you can se naučit. It is also never going away. But I did give myself some specific time goals, which makes me feel better about failing to do anything whatsoever last week except listen to some songs and read some Tolkien poetry in Czech.

The problem is that Project #6 is an all-consuming beast of burden. It's like...it can consume every spare second of my time if I allow it to. It is a high-stakes, high-rewards project.

The most pathetic of them is #5. It was also hard to quantify. But Danny and I decided that we could measure it by inviting people here (or alternatively, going somewhere else) every week. That is feasible and measurable.

For Project #17, which is a forever, on-going project, we decided to focus on just making sure we are all the way caught up to where we want to be. I have been following the reading and am caught up. I think most of our children have, but perhaps not. I need to check and make sure they are given sufficient time (and prodding) to do so. Also, the past two weeks messed up our schedule because they were different. We didn't want a bunch of people here for home church while risking getting lice. They did come on Sunday, and apparently the lesson was really good. I hid in my room nursing Joey because a. he needed to be nursed and b. I needed to hide from all the people, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

I decided that for Project #3 (which is really a big part of Project #1) I really just need to schedule the date for my test. I think I'll take it in July. Hopefully that gives me enough time for a retake if I need it.

Project #1 is due by September. I guess the real deadline is October, but I want to be early.

The April Projects are as follows:

Projects to FINISH in April, in order of "deadline" (or desired timeline):
Get rid of the bleeping bleepity bleep bleep bleeping lice
Taxes
Sign up for the GRE

Projects to Work On in April:
Home Church: get caught up by General Conference
Czech: By the end of the month finish A4.7
Grundbücherbuch: finish my revisions through Chapter 10 (I am in Chapter 7 right now, each chapter is 15-20 pages. It is long and tedious)
CGSI:
Blog: write 1-2 posts on my Czech gen blog
Cousin book: create the plan for how to attack this problem
A Year of Questions in the Book of Mormon: answer 35 questions. I am currently 7 behind. I talked about them at length with Danny, but have not written them up yet.

Those are the main things for me to work on this month.

And now I can cross one off, because while writing this stupid blog post, I realized that I should just go ahead and sign myself up for the GRE. So I did! July 20th, 8 am.

So now I have about three and a half months to get 4-6 years of math shoved back into my head. I feel really...well...I feel...

The other day one of my friends, who is also studying for the GRE, asked a question about the definition of a noun. To me, this seems completely insane. How can you get through life without knowing what nouns are!? But then, I realized that is probably how people feel about most of this math that I've forgotten. The fact that negative numbers multiplied by positive numbers make a negative number is very similarly basic.

I think I can probably knock the dumb taxes off the list tonight. There is literally only one form left to find and submit...

***

The problem with making a list of things I ought to be doing is that it inevitably turns into me wanting to rebel and wasting time with low-stakes, medium-rewards projects. For example, rather than do anything on this list yesterday, I actually just spent most of my built-in forced-free time while nursing the baby just trying to re-figure out some genealogy research I did on my mom's side of the family in 2014.

I basically got caught up to where I had been in 2014, and rewrote it all so it will take much shorter to get there the next time.

In a very summed up version: my ancestors converted to the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while in England. The mom died, the dad immigrated with 8 sons (or following some of them, it's not really clear yet). They came via a slightly less conventional route, via New Orleans and later St. Louis.

They were there during the cholera epidemic of 1851.

My ancestor's son Daniel (also my ancestor...) married a woman, had a baby (my direct line ancestor, Susan) and then the wife/mother died in St. Louis. He remarried the sister of the guy who wrote a really famous hymn. They went to Utah. Daniel divorced wife #2, seems to have become disillusioned with the church, and immigrated to California. Susan was raised by her grandparents. She married at age 17 (NOT in polygamy). She had such a lonely childhood that she decided to have 9 kids. Her dad, Daniel, remarried, had twins, and then died before he ever saw Susan again, which is pretty sad.

The grandparents who raised Susan were Charles (the original immigrant, father of Daniel) and Elizabeth Freeman, a woman who he married in St. Louis. Her entire family had been wiped out by the cholera epidemic of 1851.

But we don't know who the heck her family is. Like, where did she come from? Who were her parents? Who was her first husband? Who were her children? Really important, burning genealogical questions. Really low priority in my life, but really tempting to try to solve and think about.

Hey, we will be in St. Louis in June, so...

So it's like trying to find a needle in a haystack to look for a woman named Eliza who is married to John Johnson. Sigh.

***

My baby is teething and extra grouchy. It is really cold and windy outside. I went to a really tragic funeral on Saturday. My dad lost his job. My brother in law is trying to get a job, too. My sister lost a tooth. My other sister broke up with her boyfriend, the father of my nephew Max. My friend has some really hard family problems. I worry about this book ruining my friendship. Etc.

None of those things are remotely as stressful to me as the lice! Weird.

And though there are some logical reasons for being stressed, depressed, anxious, grouchy - I feel remarkably *happy* and *cheerful*. I have had only one panic attack in the past month and a half (and it was the impetus for sitting down to plan this stuff with Danny). I have not had any migraines. The inside Kate is very happy and content, regardless of the exterior State of the Kate.