Nine Snowboots
Some scattered thoughts
It’s my Wednesday to post again; there are a few more cohesive posts I would like to make later on, but for now, here’s what’s going on in my life.
A bad case of "not wanting to do anything if I don't absolutely have to"
Why does January feel like an eternity this year? I know it always seems to drag, but this year it really seems like New Years Day was four months ago instead of four weeks.
The mid-January blahs
Two weeks into 2020. I’m exhausted.
It’s not just the news cycle, even if everything about Australia, Iran, Trump, Putin, and the Democratic primaries made these two weeks seem like years in themselves. Winter’s always triggered my depression and this year is no different; it also doesn’t help that I caught a bit of a cold last week.
Lessons of 2019
It’s the first day of the new year, and I’ve been seeing a lot of people reflect on the previous 365 days on social media. I thought I would do something similar, but I don’t want to do a straight recap of what I did last year; you can read my old posts if you want to get an idea of a lot of what I’ve been doing, and some threads I need to wait and see how they turn out before I write about them here. Instead, I thought I’d try to come up with a small list of things I learned from my experiences in the past year.
Self-care during the holidays
I’m going to be going to my parents’ place in Miramichi for the holidays, and it’s something I both look forward to and dread. As good as it is to visit my family (as well as all their pets), there are so many things happening that I usually feel overwhelmed and stressed after a few days, and the combination of staying in a small house with four other adults and a general lack of privacy wears me out fairly quickly. When I was younger, the Christmas season was more exciting, but as an adult I just want to get through them as quickly as possible.
Through trial and error, I’ve found a few strategies that help me get through my visits.
Our stories help us feel less alone
The internet (rightfully) gets a lot of flak for a lot of things, but one thing I still love about it is that I have found so many other people whose stories and experiences I can relate to. This is the main thing that continues to attract me to blogging: I love having the opportunity to show little bits of myself and my world, and I love the feeling that comes when I read something that resonates with me on a personal level.
Changing appearances
I shaved off my beard and eyebrows last week. I had been looking in the mirror and feeling a disconnect between my inner self and the reflection looking back at me; it’s just like when my hair grows past the point where my pattern baldness is visible in my shadow.
This week's stories
I had to take a break from the personal blog last week because I was feeling a little worn down again. I think it’s a combination of a few things: overload from the news cycle, overwhelming feelings (some of which I decided to finally book an appointment with a therapist to figure out), and the time change making it dark by the time I head home (I’ve always been affected by this time of year).
I may as well answer my own survey...
I want to thank the people who filled out the survey in last week’s post; someone suggested I give my own answers to the questions I posed, so I figured that’s a way to meet my post-a-week quota. (By the way, if you still haven’t answered the survey, feel free to go ahead. It’s anonymous, goes straight to my e-mail inbox, and won’t be shared with anyone.)
I don't have much to say about my life this week, tell me about yours
I’m not feeling especially inspired to write much this week; I had to clean the kitchen again for a follow-up treatment from the exterminators, so there really wasn’t much time to devote to finding some story to tell about my own life. I’m also about to start on another project soon and want to focus on that for a bit. I’ll still post here every week, but I just needed a rest (of sorts).
In the meantime, I want to know people are reading these things, so here’s another anonymous form you can fill out.
The continuing adventures
The darker days have been making it harder for me to wake up lately.
Human variations
I've been a little more cavalier about adding people on Facebook lately; sometimes I go through spurts where I browse the “people you may know” list for new connections.
Hurricanes and tooth extractions
Halifax was hit by Hurricane Dorian, the same storm that caused so much damage in the Bahamas, last weekend. It was only a category 2 by the time it got here, but we’re not really accustomed to the storms being hurricane-strength when they reach Canada.
Life is tiring, part LXXXVIII
My energy has been off for the past little while, and most of my free time usually involves me sleeping or wanting to be back home to sleep. I don’t know whether this is a side effect of my medication, some other underlying medical reason, or just another depressive spell. A lot of the time I don't want to do anything enough to endure the slightest bits of effort they take.