Panic Attack Sunday…

Ok. I need to talk this out. I have been having some panic attacks on and off all day. I haven’t really ever had them before, that I’m aware of and I think I would have noticed, so I’m a little…unnerved?…by this. Of course, this immediately sends The Committee scrabbling around with scissors, which is never a good thing.

So, what has me experiencing this lovely mental chaos? There are a few things, but the most prominent one, the one that comes to mind first when I ask myself what is going on is I’m terrified that I will be stuck living this way, in a travel trailer and my kids in an rv and a 5th wheel, for the rest of my life. Just writing that has caused the panic to start to surface, again.

I know that this is not the complete picture, though. The fear of being stuck in rv life is just the total of other fears. What am I afraid of? Well, there are a number of things, and I’m not sure that I can pinpoint them all. This is part of the reason I am writing it down. It helps to be able to see my thoughts instead of just hearing them rattle around my brain cavity.

I’m afraid of failure, and success, in my endeavors to achieve a better way of living. I turned painting curb numbers into a business, one I would like to see succeed. I am not expecting it to bring us financial independence and security, though that would be nice. My sole expectation for Curb Addresses Save Lives is to increase the amount of income that we have coming in, and to improve on the number of sales we make in comparison to before having the business license.

I’ve been talking about herbs a lot, lately, and I have even gone so far as to draw up the plans for a nice sized herb garden. I keep having this idea of a you pick catnip garden. I have no idea if it would do well or not, but catnip is incredibly easy to grow and I know none of it would go to waste regardless of whether or not anyone wanted to come pick their own. I have cats, I have friends with cats, they have friends with cats. I’m not opposed to giving away catnip mostly because I know how much the cats love it and believe that every cat should have a catnip stash. I would call it “Brucie’s You Pick Catnip Garden,” after our cat Brucie, who has grown up with live catnip.

I also think I could probably sell some of my herbs, especially since they are organic, non-gmo, and fresh. I am considering also selling herb plant starts. I’m not sure how all of that works, but I’m looking into how one goes about selling their herbs fresh from the garden, or dried.

I also am trying to come up with other ideas for income. The herbs, catnip, and curbs are all a Spring/Summer thing. There are two more seasons that I would like to fill with more than one source of income. Winter hasn’t been horrible this year, financially, but I have experienced too many winters that have been so financially strapped that just staying alive and keeping a place to have everything plugged in and hooked up was always in jeopardy. I’d really like to never have to go through that, again. Its much too stressful.

I want to create an income path that allows me to stop cleaning. For multiple reasons, this is not a career, merely a job that allows me to cover staying alive as long as there is no down swing to the number of cleans in a given pay period. I want more stability than that.

I guess this is another area that is causing panic. I’m not just terrified that I’ll be stuck in rv life until the end of time but that I will be stuck cleaning for the rest of my life as well. That’s obviously not true, but there is a part of me that believes it’s a real possibility and can’t seem to see the other potential options. Yep, I can feel the panic rising once more.

I’ve been doing some breathing exercises to help calm me down and daubing my stress relief oil blend to my wrists and a dab on the collar of my sweatshirt, right beneath my chin where I can smell it continuously. I really don’t know what else to do about panic attacks, other than to realize that that’s all it is: a panic attack. Oh! And that it will pass.

I was hoping that writing this would help me down off the ledge I’ve been mentally stuck on for most of the day, but it hasn’t. I was hoping I’d be able to formulate some plans to ease the panic, but have only accomplished re-igniting it. Panic really sucks.

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