It hasn’t been my finest couple of weeks.
In fact it has been absolutely less than average. Being a person who finds it difficult to sit still, I have had to sit and experience my body telling me there is no way I can move forward. I felt like this for months after I came back from Nepal - a dragging fog; fatigue and a rapidly declining fitness - and I was only just starting to feel as if I may be able to get my act together. Then I became ill again and am at the end of an enforced ten days off work, which included three stints in hospital. I have been unable to do much at all and if I did, then man did I pay for it later.
I do not like this ‘sitting around getting better’ gig; but I am fearful of how my energy levels will be when I step back into my classroom tomorrow. Today I was unable to get out of bed before mid-day. I wasn’t sleeping, I was simply feeling too unwell to move too far. It sucks. It is teaching me about myself though; priorities, value around wellness and re-thinking how I have really been feeling these last nine months since I was sick in Nepal. Pretty bloody average to be honest. I have ignored my health; I have allowed stress to take over; I have not dealt very well with grief; I have not had five minutes really, to stop, breathe and just bloody well land.
I know the ‘told-you-so-ers’ out there will be thinking I push too hard and need to slow down. This could be true - sometimes. Since Nepal I have been literally at snails pace because I have been unable to push myself like I did. I have slowed right down and I do not like it one bit! Many people think they know how to live your life better than you do … maybe so, but it’s not theirs to play with.
But here is the lesson - I have a large amount of control over how I respond to feeling so darn blah. I can choose to wallow in it all and marinate myself to nothingness in how bad it all feels, or, I can accept this is how it is for now and each day aim for feeling a little better. I can continue to absorb myself in the activities that bring me a sense of wonder and fulfilment. I can even make the most of the down time to catch up on things I am usually too busy to attend to; today, for example, I loaded a bunch of new photos into my website and yesterday I ordered new cards for printing. I can and have, spread out on the couch with my cat and watched back to back movies - a rare thing for me. I have sat in the sun and soaked up those healing rays, and I have made bliss balls and soup to store in my freezer. This situation has also created the opportunity to be helped by others - and I have had plenty of it in the last couple of weeks, from wonderful people I barely know.
Good things can come from a seemingly sucky situation, it is just sometimes difficult to see past it as we are often so busy comparing ourselves to how things were.
