And the results are in.....

The Covid test results are back.... 

.... and negative.

I suppose it's not a bad thing that I had the last two days to rest. Goodness knows, I don't take that much time to rest very often.  Maybe the universe was just trying to help me out with a nudge in the direction of self-care?

Self-care is an interesting topic. Sometimes I think of it as resting. But honestly, self-care for me often looks like things that take energy.  Spending time with friends is a big one on my list of things that I find restorative. Family game nights with all the kids, even on Zoom- we laugh SO hard. Working on a quilt in the sewing room- or, just even playing with fabric in there (I like the planning as much as the actual creating). Fourteen-hour car trips to spend a couple of days watching dolphins (the dolphins part more than the car trip part anyway). And then, there are things that I don't enjoy doing, but I enjoy having done- like, cleaning the house.  I suppose exercise fits into that category as well.

It seems sort of ho-hum to say that one of my goals for the year is to be better at self-care. I mean, don't we always say we need to be better at that? I think I need to broaden my definition of things that are self-care. Saying "no" without explaining myself, for example- I'm not great at that.  Accepting help without saying, "No, thanks, I'm okay." Letting myself off the hook more often. Guarding my down-time and not feeling guilty for it.  Understanding that just because I can, doesn't mean I should (see: saying no). All of these are things I could practice more.

I also need to reframe why self-care is important. It's not just because "you can't pour from an empty pitcher"... which, is true. But why is it we should have to justify taking care of ourselves?

I suppose if I were going to summarize this post with a theme, I would have to say it's this: Because You're Worth It (apologies to that cosmetics company).

Tucker says, "It's okay to just chill, Mom."

How Did We Get Here? Part one.

So, there was this pandemic.

We go about our day to day lives and while sometimes we stop to take stock, most of the time, we do what we always do.  We wake up and start our days- we go to work, we take care of our families, we pay the bills, we try to figure out what's for dinner, maybe we get some time in there for things that make our souls sing (family game night? time with a good book? laughing at a movie on TV? hanging out with friends? whatever it is that refreshes you).  And then, we go to bed, and we get up, and we do it all over again (apologies to The Kinks). 

Once in a while though, something happens that makes us pause and examine what we're doing.  That can be something wonderful (winning the lottery??) but unfortunately, I find it's often the things that are hard to bear that pull me up short.

In the case of this particular Sea Change for me, it started with an announcement that we were "going remote".  We didn't know how to do that. We scrambled, under the shadow of fear of this virus that was spreading fast and killing people. We thought (hoped?) that by doing this- by hunkering down, going remote, washing our groceries, wearing our masks, and learning how to eyeball the distance of 6 feet to socially distance ourselves- we'd get through it and get back to normal.

Boy, what we didn't know.

As this dragged on and on and on, it became increasingly clear that, for the foreseeable future, this IS normal.  Ouch.

Not gonna lie. I suffered. I needed my people. I needed my kids who moved half a country away. I  needed to do the work I love- that is a huge part of my identity- in the ways I loved to do it. Face to face. Person to person. I believe in the energy exchange between beings. And mine was sapped, with no source of fuel. I won't go into all the details of the Ugly Phase. Suffice it to say, it deserved that label.

And this ugliness raised some questions for me. Namely, why am I doing the day to day the way I do? I've been wanting to get out of this cold, dark Northeast for decades, in a vague sort of "someday" way. Every winter is the winter of my discontent (sorry, Bard). And now that one bird had flown the nest, and the second was prepping his wings for flight, it was time to more seriously think about moving on.

Moving on is complicated though, isn't it? On paper, it's a process, a list of to-do's: Find a place to live somewhere warm, sell the house, quit the job(s), get a new job, buy a new house.  Neat and tidy, checkboxes to tick and move to the next.

Life's not neat and tidy, though, so the actual doing of the moving on thing is really pretty overwhelming. Find a place somewhere warm to live.... oh, but one with a community that shares my values.  Sell the house... oh, right, those bathrooms upstairs, yikes.  Quit the job.... that also means leaving my people, and that hurts my heart.  And so on, and so on.

So I started taking baby steps, moving in the direction of moving.  Get the house remodeled. Research places in The South that I could tolerate.  Look at the finances- how do we make this work?  The one silver lining- we DID figure out how to "go remote", so that was going to make moving away a whole lot easier. Actually, it would make it possible.

Still, though, a lot of this was mental exercise. I mean, we did the remodeling- but we figured we'd get to enjoy it for a few years before we sold the house. There was still a vague "someday" quality to it all.

And then someone I love, lost someone she loved. And that was a whole new "take stock" moment.

This is a long post. If you're still reading, bless your heart. (Practicing speaking South.)  I'm going to take a pause here before Part 2. So, stay tuned.

A sick day.... what's that?

So here we are again.

I likely have The Virus- I was exposed earlier this week and have symptoms today. Mild, thankfully. I've had much worse. (Shout out to science and my vaccines and booster!) I'll test tomorrow so I have a definitive answer- or at least will hopefully have one.  This damn pandemic occupies way too much emotional and physical energy even when you're NOT infected.

But I'm going to take this opportunity to do some writing here.  I struggle with down-time. In fact, I've been in my work email most of the morning arranging the things I would have done if I were there today.  I kind of don't mind it, I accepted positions with responsibility and so, I take responsibility. Probably I could do a better job setting things up so other people can step up in my absence.  I'll spend some time on that this year.

Having said that, while I don't mind taking responsibility that I've accepted, I'm also getting a little tired of responsibility. Hence this Sea Change year. I've been working hard since I was 16- and, if you count babysitting jobs, since I was 13- and am working on accepting the reality that a) I'm getting older and b) it's okay to slow down.  I can still be important without an important job title.  (I'm going to repeat that to myself as an affirmation often, I think.)  And maybe I don't need to work AND take a sick day?

That is one of the developmental tasks of getting older, isn't it? That transition from work to rest.  I'm a big fan of Erik Erikson, and spend a lot of my time as a therapist helping people understand and adjust to these normative life stages (oooh that's even the name of the private practice I'm in!). But as with most things, the theoretical and the reality are different creatures.  Healer, heal thyself? Practice what you preach? So many cliches fit here- insert your own favorite.

There are a lot of things I intend to write about. I don't want to clutter up this one post with all of them.  So I think what I'll do is let this one stand alone, since it's meaningful to me in its own right, and start a new one with what I'm thinking of as my origin story for this new stage of life.  (I won't even think about getting into my previous origin stories... that's what therapy is for.)

So I suppose the theme of this post is: One Thing at a Time. Something I need to get better at.