I have been failing at my goal of sticking with the discipline of writing. Not completely, but I have definitely not been keeping up the pace with my blog.
One small victory: I haven’t met my goal, but with this post I at least have beat the number of posts I made last year. And it’s only the beginning of November, so I still have plenty of time for more posts. I probably won’t hit 24 though.
I would have liked to think I was in much better spirits by now, but my mood has still been extremely variable. After a bit of a boost through September, and the first part of October, I’ve hit another wall emotionally and feel like I’m back in a fragile state again. Part of it seems to be directly related to energy levels. The things that are demanded of me mentally and emotionally just seem to run through my reserves too quickly. By the end of the week I feel flat as a pancake, and if anything goes slightly wrong, I have no resilience left to deal with it.
A chunk of that energy had been caught up in looking after one of our two pet rats. She started showing odd symptoms and the vet narrowed it down to some form of pituitary tumor. We got a prescription to help her manage it, but it was a terminal diagnosis. Still, she happily ate and seemed to be happy-bruxing and keen to move around, sniff and explore, even though she had poor coordination and reduced strength. I took a lot of time to feed her mushy food because she was struggling to bite into anything crunchy or tough, and made sure she had her meds, and washed her off because she wasn’t always able to groom herself properly. She finally passed on last week, which wasn’t a huge shock but did blindside me a little bit, and I have been see-sawing between anxiety, guilt, and relief at having one less responsibility.
At work I have put in for an extended leave of absence and officially announced it to my team. I’m still counting down Mondays. It’s ironic because there are definitely things coming down the pipe at work that I find interesting and want to tackle, but now I’m struggling with summoning the energy or the focus to execute on them.
Mostly I’m just tired of feeling fragile and tired. I’m masking hard to avoid showing how I’m feeling most of the time, and that seems to be the most draining part of all. In the very wise words of Dr Harry Vanderspeigle, “this is some bullshit.”