One longer term goal reached

Well two. Last week I managed to take that short trip. This past week I decided since I could do that I could do the workday a two hour drive away without needing Xanax. And the good news, I did it, twice! When I got there last Friday I got a call that I had to come back to my home area for a problem. So I got there, spent about twenty minutes there, and turned around and came back. As a result of that I went back on Monday to do the full day there. On Monday not only did I manage a full day there, but I had to stay longer by about an hour, and when I got home I did 25 minutes of running in place on the Nintendo Wii.

Today I was working at my normal location. I reached another longer term goal by doing 20 continuous minutes of Wii running. Previously I had used the shorter times on the Wii sports to add up to the 20 minutes. I had been doing the "Island Lap", which is 13 minutes, plus 5 and 3 minutes to get over 20 minutes. Today I set and did the 20 minute continuous run, and then followed it with a 3 minute run. I've been building to this since the beginning of last year, when walking to the nearest corner of my block was my goal.

My next goal is doing the 20 minute continuous run in place on a consistent basis. I'm happy I reached the 20 minute continuous goal.

Poked the anxiety bear

I was able to get through everything yesterday. I did have anxiety, but it did not get out of control and I was able to not take a xanax for it. When I would start feeling feeling anxious, I would tell myself that I had recently done all these things for work, and while i had taken a xanax those days, if I could do it with the xanax I could do it without: travel 90+ minutes from home, go places I've never been before, meet people I've never met before.

Poking the anxiety bear

The past week went well from an anxiety standpoint. On Monday I did a Xanax just in case. On Tuesday no Xanax. On I had to drive out for training to a site nearly 2 hours from home. I took a Xanax for it and I was fine. Thursday and Friday I was local and no Xanax.

Since I have taken a Xanax for my two far away training sessions and been fine, today I am "poking the bear" of anxiety. I'm renting a car and driving about 90 minutes away to meet someone I've known for a few years via internet only from a message forum. So I'll be far from home and the "safe zone" of my car, in a city I've never been to, meeting someone I've never met in person. Also my work called me at 3am this morning for something, so I am tired.

I'll be bringing my Xanax just in case.

Ok so far.

The workday two hours drive away went with a single xanax but without anxiety incident other than my being tired. This coming Wednesday I have another training session at another site that's quite the drive, about 1 3/4 hours. Tomorrow and Tuesday I'll be training at local sites with a trainer who is remote.

I have to say I'm surprised that they do not do a number of things from an IT standpoint my other employers have done. In my opinion it would make their life a lot better from an IT support standpoint. But they have the way they want it do.

I didn't exercise the first three days of the job, but I've done my 20 minutes both days this weekend. While getting exercise is good for my health in general, and it's supposed to be good for depression in general, where it's helping most is when I'm walking around for work I'm able to tell myself that I can do it because I can do Wii exercise for 20 minutes and if I can do that I can certainly handle the walking around. It's a confidence boost. According to the internets and my shrink it's called "cognitive reframing" or cognitive restructuring. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reframing

Tomorrow is Monday and the first full week of working.