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Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit
Mar. 4th, 2024 10:30 amGetting sick obliterated my last week. I started to feel...off on Tuesday and it developed into a full-blown cold by Wednesday. I worked a half-day on Thursday, but since then I've called in to work because I just didn't have it in me to focus on minutiae while also feeling like death warmed over. Instead of doing anything productive, I played a lot of Final Fantasy XIV, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and some other games.
I was hoping I'd start feeling better over the weekend, but no dice there either. The cough got really bad on Saturday and that evening I got hit with the worst case of chills I've felt in a while. I took off my clothes to get ready for bed, and all of a sudden my body just started to seize and shiver alarmingly. I couldn't unclench and it felt like I couldn't breathe. My dear husband even lied on top of me to get me warm, but it felt like being suffocated under a heavy, warm iron.
R. went through the illness cycle ahead of me, so I knew that the chills would be the worst of it. While he recovered within a day or two of that, though, I'm still significantly under the weather. I have to blow my nose every 30 minutes or so, and if I take a deep breath or laugh just right it can trigger a coughing fit out of nowhere. Still, I feel a lot better than I did last week.
I think a lot of that was just being so slovenly. For several days in a row I sat in my office chair, the living room couch, or lied in bed and that was it. We had edibles and played games; got back into the CW Arrowverse shows post-Crisis on Infinite Earths; cancelled the plans we had over the week and weekend. Spending such a long time being that checked out renewed my desire to engage with the world so NOW the work is not pushing myself so hard I get sick again. Now that I have an actual PTO tally again it means something to have taken 20 hours off last week.
This week marks the beginning of the quarter's final month. I have four weeks before I get to look back on the last three months and see how far I've gotten on my goals. The feeling that instills in me is a lot like laughter, but right now that can easily devolve into a crying or coughing fit.
I haven't been necessarily productive, but I have learned a number of things. Overall, I've been making poor choices when they count. I haven't taken opportunities to catch up on reading and writing, and I haven't prioritized my life toward the things I'd like to be doing. I still spend a lot of mental energy resisting being present in whatever moment I'm in because stress is something I've come to pathologically avoid. Given the last...eight years or so, I understand how I'd develop a sensitivity to that kind of thing. But we live in stressful times, and in order to properly engage with them I'm just going to have to learn how to manage stress better.
I don't think this will be hard, but it will take time and effort. I've gotten into a comfortable rut over time, so it will take spoons to work my way out of it. I'm starting small this month, and hopefully I can work my way back to some basic level of functionality when April rolls around.
One of the reasons my habit-tracking and goal-setting haven't worked yet this year is my inability to break things down into small chunks that feel doable. At the beginning of the year I thought just establishing the habit would be the most important thing; just devote time to important things and eventually shit gets done. But that's just not true. I need to actually write down the dozens of tiny tasks that need to be done or else it becomes this free-floating anxiety I need to escape from.
So, instead of devoting 30 minutes to "cleaning the burrow", I need to have a list of projects I can tackle within those 30 minutes (or at least, close enough). There's always stuff to forget, and that's the source of anxiety for me. If I have everything written down in a list, it's a lot easier to trust I've got a place for whatever random thought comes up. Not sure what needs to be done with your cleaning time? Consult the list and check off one thing a day. That's it.
That's what I'll try this week. Every morning, I'll imagine the thing I've done that lets me check off a habit without feeling guilty about it. Then, I write it down. This way I can make sure I'm taking active, mindful steps toward these goals when I have the opportunity to do that.
Really that's all goal-setting is: taking this giant, impossible dream and figuring out what its parts are made of. My impossible dream is to be a productive working writer. The parts, of course, are words I've painstakingly put together. But also the minutes, hours, days spent in contemplation. There never seems to be enough time for exceptionally insightful writing, but that's not true. Time is everywhere you look; you just have to use it wisely.
I was hoping I'd start feeling better over the weekend, but no dice there either. The cough got really bad on Saturday and that evening I got hit with the worst case of chills I've felt in a while. I took off my clothes to get ready for bed, and all of a sudden my body just started to seize and shiver alarmingly. I couldn't unclench and it felt like I couldn't breathe. My dear husband even lied on top of me to get me warm, but it felt like being suffocated under a heavy, warm iron.
R. went through the illness cycle ahead of me, so I knew that the chills would be the worst of it. While he recovered within a day or two of that, though, I'm still significantly under the weather. I have to blow my nose every 30 minutes or so, and if I take a deep breath or laugh just right it can trigger a coughing fit out of nowhere. Still, I feel a lot better than I did last week.
I think a lot of that was just being so slovenly. For several days in a row I sat in my office chair, the living room couch, or lied in bed and that was it. We had edibles and played games; got back into the CW Arrowverse shows post-Crisis on Infinite Earths; cancelled the plans we had over the week and weekend. Spending such a long time being that checked out renewed my desire to engage with the world so NOW the work is not pushing myself so hard I get sick again. Now that I have an actual PTO tally again it means something to have taken 20 hours off last week.
This week marks the beginning of the quarter's final month. I have four weeks before I get to look back on the last three months and see how far I've gotten on my goals. The feeling that instills in me is a lot like laughter, but right now that can easily devolve into a crying or coughing fit.
I haven't been necessarily productive, but I have learned a number of things. Overall, I've been making poor choices when they count. I haven't taken opportunities to catch up on reading and writing, and I haven't prioritized my life toward the things I'd like to be doing. I still spend a lot of mental energy resisting being present in whatever moment I'm in because stress is something I've come to pathologically avoid. Given the last...eight years or so, I understand how I'd develop a sensitivity to that kind of thing. But we live in stressful times, and in order to properly engage with them I'm just going to have to learn how to manage stress better.
I don't think this will be hard, but it will take time and effort. I've gotten into a comfortable rut over time, so it will take spoons to work my way out of it. I'm starting small this month, and hopefully I can work my way back to some basic level of functionality when April rolls around.
One of the reasons my habit-tracking and goal-setting haven't worked yet this year is my inability to break things down into small chunks that feel doable. At the beginning of the year I thought just establishing the habit would be the most important thing; just devote time to important things and eventually shit gets done. But that's just not true. I need to actually write down the dozens of tiny tasks that need to be done or else it becomes this free-floating anxiety I need to escape from.
So, instead of devoting 30 minutes to "cleaning the burrow", I need to have a list of projects I can tackle within those 30 minutes (or at least, close enough). There's always stuff to forget, and that's the source of anxiety for me. If I have everything written down in a list, it's a lot easier to trust I've got a place for whatever random thought comes up. Not sure what needs to be done with your cleaning time? Consult the list and check off one thing a day. That's it.
That's what I'll try this week. Every morning, I'll imagine the thing I've done that lets me check off a habit without feeling guilty about it. Then, I write it down. This way I can make sure I'm taking active, mindful steps toward these goals when I have the opportunity to do that.
Really that's all goal-setting is: taking this giant, impossible dream and figuring out what its parts are made of. My impossible dream is to be a productive working writer. The parts, of course, are words I've painstakingly put together. But also the minutes, hours, days spent in contemplation. There never seems to be enough time for exceptionally insightful writing, but that's not true. Time is everywhere you look; you just have to use it wisely.
