The realization...

Beware.  We move from the crafty posts back to the raw and messy...

A couple weeks ago, when I should have been desperately trying to tackle the massive number of tasks that needed to be done yesterday (or last week or last month...you get the picture), I realized just how much I needed to step away from it all.  Even just for a few hours.  I have been pushing myself so hard this winter.  In work...always in work.  Except for one day that I went to Seattle to visit the family (location of 3 of these photos), I haven't had a day off since Christmas.  In exercising...I'm so excited that finally my back and my mental state has allowed me to move freely again that I've wanted to just keep increasing intensity, weights, and time.  In everything... 

I didn't come to this realization when I was lifting and heard and felt a 'lovely' pop from my lower rib cage followed by some fairly intense pain.  After a visit to the chiropractor's office and a talk with the doctor when I thought I may have actually cracked a rib, I found out that most likely it was 'only' a strained rib ligament.  I can't know for sure, but this was not a 'lifting' injury...my past experience points to an injury that occurred because of a severely dehydrated, severely stressed, severely run-down system.  The lifting just pushed it over the edge.

I still didn't come to this realization when what seemed to be all of a sudden, a massive head cold slammed into me at the same time.  I had to take a night off when it felt like my head would explode but after that had to keep pushing on...this time with water, juice, kleenex, and dayquil taking residence beside my computer. 

I didn't come to this realization when our entire research plan for the next 2 years was pulled out from under us and I didn't react.  I couldn't react.  And that is not only strange but should have been a huge red flag to me.

But a few hours later, when I was told of an idea that J was pursuing to try to salvage the research program...one that I don't know if I have it in me to do...I went completely still and quiet, not responding to anything he was saying.  I couldn't respond.  And then when I hung up the phone, I burst into tears.  Not a pretty cry with tears rolling softly down the cheeks...but the ugly, hysterical kind where I couldn't breathe properly.  When it stopped, because eventually it has to stop, I just sat in my chair and thought about why that happened.  Why all the above has been happening.

I couldn't remember when I last ate vegetables in any decent amount.  I've barely been cooking at home, opting for the convenience and speed of 'fast food' so I can get more done in a day.   I couldn't remember when was the last time I took my morning walk.  I couldn't remember when was the last time I intentionally breathed.  I couldn't remember when I've gotten on my mat and just let my body work in restorative passive poses for extended periods of time...something I've come to know over the past couple years of work that I really need to counter-act all this built up tension.  I couldn't remember when I last drank more than a couple glasses of water, instead relying on caffeine laden drinks to get me through the day.  It had been weeks since I've been able to get more than a few hours of interrupted sleep and I was running on exhaustion.  I'm barely doing any of the things that I know I need to keep my stress levels down: reading, knitting or spinning or crafting, cooking etc.  And yet, I'm pushing and pushing and pushing...

The thing is...it's March.  It is such a predictable pattern with me and it's right on schedule.  Normally it is when I'm hiring technicians (if you've been reading for any length of time you know I loathe this task).  It's when I'm starting to gear up for the field season and being gone for 6 months.  It's when everybody that needs something from me comes to the realization that I'm going to be gone for 6 months and they start panicking and asking for stuff.  All. At. Once.  It's the time when I look around at my house and my crafts and I realize that somehow, yet again, the winter has passed and I didn't do anything that I 'wanted' to do.  And I should accept it and 'let it go'...but it makes my blood pressure rise and I just want to scream in frustration.

The breakdown that occurred that Friday a few weeks ago...I get those from time to time.  About twice a year, the pressure gets too high and the stress gets too high and I crack.  I'm not saying it's a particularly healthy way to deal with it all...but normally that crack releases it all and the next day, though groggy and snotty from crying, I can move forward and I can see things more clearly.  The difference here is that the relief didn't come.  I think a lot of that is because we still have no idea what we are doing this summer and no idea how to salvage this project.  My job is not in immediate jeopardy but I've put my heart and soul into this project and it is just crushing to know that we can't complete it the way it needs to be completed.  I don't handle 'in limbo' very well -- particularly when it comes to my job.  If there is a plan and a direction, I'll make it happen even if it about kills me.  But no plan...  I honestly have no idea how to handle that and I'm pretty sure this is why every minute of every day, I feel another breakdown coming.

Going back to the beginning of all this.  I knew I somehow needed to find time to step back away from it.  After the breakdown, I took the Friday night off and I knit for a bit and then spun for a bit.  Saturday I took half a day off and baked my traditional birthday huckleberry pie for John.  I went to the grocery store and actually bought a week's worth of healthy food and prepared a lot of it to put in individual containers so I couldn't use the 'convenience' excuse.  I drank water...so much water.  I slept in.  And I took time to just sit.  Not doing anything.  Because I am SO not one of those people that has to be moving at all times...I haven't just sat for a very long time.

Since then, I've been writing my daily intentions directly into my daily planner rather than 'remembering' them (or not remembering if truth be told).  And if, at 11 at night, I haven't done them, I stop, no matter how tired I am and I do them.  I go for my walk outside.  I spin a little.  I lay on a spinal roll and just breathe for a bit.  I try to exchange 20 minutes of restless sleep for things that I know relax me and the result, I'm finding, may be less time in bed, but it's better sleep during that time.

There's no happy ending to this sad stream of consciousness.  We are still in complete and panicked  limbo.  My 'to-do' list is still getting bigger rather than smaller.  There is no way that those things I wanted to do this winter are getting done.  I am trying desperately to remember those words I wrote here for 2016 -- let it go.  But wow, it's easier to say those things when your world has not been turned upside down.

I hope I'm back soon with a more cheery post...maybe I'll at least make the time to sew buttons on one sweater.  Maybe I'll finish up one more skein of handspun.  Maybe I'll stop hyperventilating every damn day.  In the meantime, know there is a reason for the silence...

When life spins completely out of your control...what do you do to reel it back in?

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Now playing:  Stand by Me sung by Tracy Chapman (seriously, listen to this)

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