Another Sunday Morning – Or “Getting My Shit Together”

Where I Was This Morning

I have been in a funk for a few days. I have not slept well for some time now. Despite that, I had some really good days early in the week. But by week’s end I was burned out, tired, lonely, stressed, and concerned enough about my mental health that I was looking up early signs of depression in my old Pysch books from college.

Just for the record, I don’t think I’m dealing with depression. Those few items that could fit the description also fall under the “dealing with grief” category and I’m sure they also all fall under the “dealing with COVID” category if there is such a list.

What I Was Thinking

Being in an off mood for me always means it’s time to stop and think. Something is not right, let’s see if I can figure it out. Last weekend and early in this past week were good days for where I am at. What changed? As far as I can tell, it’s two things:

1. I let work pile up on me. We are nearing the end of the month which is always a push for administrative paperwork. We had to lay off the Admin person from our region several months ago due to COVID cutbacks and I have been filling that role ever since along with the other duties that land on my desk. This past week, there have been a lot of those other duties and despite working longer days I am not keeping up. I am supposed to be transitioning in a few months to a new position, but I can’t see anything being done to fill the Admin role I will be leaving behind. So I have let that mentally pile up…
2. I didn’t set myself up well for pushing forward. What I mean by that is that I didn’t consciously decide how I was going to make progress every day. I see dealing with grief as a journey. It’s where I found myself but it’s not somewhere I want to stay. So I am have to work on leaving there and find my way to somewhere better for me. The road back is gone. I can never return to where I was, no matter how strongly I wish that I could. So from here, my two choices every day are to stay where I am and be unhappy or to move ahead and find a way out, whatever that looks like. (Okay, there’s a third option – let’s call it a “dead end” – but that’s not my direction.) Somewhere during the past week, I stopped plotting my course and just starting existing where I was.

What I Can Do About It Today

I have recognized at least some of my problems (there’s always more, right?), now what to do about them…?

Start with self-care: I always dress for the day, I am not a “spend the day in PJ’s” kind of person, so getting dressed isn’t really a pick-me-up. Instead I took an early shower and washed my hair. I generally shower just before bed so I hit the sack clean, refreshed, and relaxed. Today, my well-being is more important than my schedule. I cooked and ate a healthy breakfast even though I wasn’t really into it at first. By the time I finished cooking, my appetite was starting to stir awake after all.

Do the little but important things: I made my list, went across the street, and did my grocery shopping for the week. I made sure that what went onto the list, and what ended up in my cart spontaneously, were all healthy choices. I am set up for good eating for the week. This ties back to the self-care by making sure I have enough food, of good quality, ready to grab when I am ready to eat.

Make a plan: I feel like there’s a lot on my shoulders right now. If I stand back and picture it, it’s one big, heavy load. But if I look closer, that monstrous load is really just a lot of little things. So let’s drop that load on the ground and take a look at it. I grabbed a sheet of paper and wrote it out, all the pieces. Then I crossed off those items that I can safely and responsibly ignore – that’s a load I don’t need to carry at all. I put dates by the items that can be put off for a little longer – I don’t need to carry those just yet. Then I looked at what was left – it’s a smaller load, a manageable load if I organize it and my time efficiently.

Some of the items in that load are simply work, things I need to get done at the office to be successful at my day job. Those I can relegate to the office hours and add a few more hours where needed to get it all done.

Some of the items left in the load are dealing with my emotional state. Part of the work to be done there includes writing like this and also making progress on pulling together my notes and recollections from 2019. Writing helps me find clarity, forces me to organize my thinking, to examine my own process, and to recognize where I am letting myself develop lazy habits in my own care. So that writing is important.

Write my way out of 2019: Writing out the experiences of 2019 is my way of processing that time with Chad. My brain desperately wants to blot out a lot of it, it was hard to live through and I have to make an effort to recall some aspects of that year. I don’t want to remember all of it… and yet I do. It was time we shared and I don’t want to let go of a moment of that. But remembering it is still painful, still brings tears and heartache, still highlights my current isolation. But writing it out also brings a small sense of closure to it. My fervent wish is that the more I write of it, the more I will learn to accept it as the truth of my life and put the hard bits away on a mental back shelf and be done with them, keeping the good bits out to be looked at and treasured.

Side Note: I have found that my brain actually shies away from 2019 sometimes. I wrote recently about the three years of fires we have gone through – but my brain jumped over last year and I wrote it as: Tubbs Fire (2017), Kincade Fire (2018) and Wallbridge Fire (2020). As if 2019 never happened. I have also said “last year” meaning 2018. It’s a weird thing to have one’s own brain do!

Being good to myself: Part of the load left over is the pressure to do things for myself that help set me up for better living. That doesn’t sound like something that should be a burden, but for me this is hard stuff, harder than it should be.

During my time with Chad, it was easy because anything that served to make him happy also made me happy and I had a vested interested in improving his life, even before he got sick. I had a privileged upbringing – Chad did not. I had a stable and loving family, even if I chose to make life difficult for us all by not recognizing it at the time – Chad did not. I determined early in our relationship that I was going to make sure that we worked to make ourselves a life together that provided us the comfort, stability, and love that he had missed out on for so long.

My focus for that was always “us” and that makes this part of it harder for me. I still need to find a way to be comfortable with turning that care and attention to only half the team now. I know I never let him down in my love and care for him, but I have a part of my heart that does not believe that I am worth that same love and care alone. It’s hard to accept that I feel this way, it’s difficult to think about, and therefore hard to work my way out of. This part is going to take more effort.

My hope at this point is that, having recognized this part of my problem, my brain will start to look for a way forward in dealing with it. This is one of those things that just feels “slippery” to me – I can’t get a hold of it, can’t pin it down, can’t even properly label it yet. But I know it’s there, I can point to it now, and I will have to learn how to explore it somehow in order to get past it.

Do the things that bring me peace: This one should be easier but, again, I get in my own way when it comes to actually getting it done. Some days I paint, or write, or watch a movie I really wanted to see, or read a book I am interested in. But some days… I troll the internet as if my answer is magically just one click away somewhere, just one more, okay the next one… I can waste hours doing nothing, getting nowhere, not doing the things I love or the things I need to do. This is where I start to wonder about depression. But it’s really more like me just stalling on moving ahead.

The reason, I think, is that every step forward also means another step further away from where I really want to be once again. And while it makes no sense – the place I want to be doesn’t exist anymore – I can’t help but feel that I am leaving it behind by moving on. And I am oh so reluctant to leave there!

The best way I know to spend time and get nowhere at all is to scroll, click, scroll… and it gets me nowhere alright.

Where I Am Headed Next

To be honest, I don’t know. Chad was always my connection to other people. He was more outgoing than me, more affable and likely to make friends wherever he went. I just tagged along with that, benefited from his nature. I am socially uneasy, awkward, and feel out of place most of the time.

To make things worse, when I get nervous about being around people, I talk too much. My internal filter, trapped behind barred doors, screams “SHUT UP!” to no avail and I blather on. Which then makes me more nervous and, therefore, more talkative. Chad used to squeeze my hand as his way of helping me recognize when it was time to shut that down. I have yet to find my own way to unlock my filter and let it do its job.

Refocus… this just popped into my head as I am thinking about all this. My focus recently has been inward – what’s right, what’s wrong within me. I think I also need to focus on those around me, look outward. Maybe I have an insight that can be helpful to reroute someone else’s bad day. Maybe I can share a happy moment with someone else. Maybe right now I just need to witness other lives going well to be reminded that it does happen that way, even if I don’t always feel a part of it.

Okay, enough with the explanations and theorizing! I need a plan here!

Step 1. Get back to work. I set myself a deadline for the rulebook I am rewriting. It’s my own arbitrary, self-imposed deadline so I need to stick to it. I believe I gave myself plenty of time, including a little extra time for days like today. This goal is achievable.

Step 2. Work at work. I need to clearly define each day’s goals for my day job, stick as closely to them as I can while also dealing with the on-the-fly nature of part of my job as best as I can. I also need to either delegate (not sure to whom…) or decline certain projects if they can’t be put off to a better time. This is something I can do.

Step 3. Continue with my meditation, painting, writing, reading, and self-care with diligence. The end goal is an improved life for myself, so that needs to also be a priority for me. I can do this.

It feels like I have some variation of this conversation (all the above) with myself every week. Am I making progress? Do I really recognize where I am holding myself up? Are my good days a sign that I am headed in the right direction? Will the hard days ease up eventually? It’s hard to know if I am just going in circles at this stage or if I am really headed somewhere. Or maybe it is that I am walking in circles, but the circles are getting larger, leading off somewhere after all.