Lately- the last two weeks- things have just been hard. Too hard. It's not the sort of straightforward depression that I was dealing with over the summer. It's a trickier kind. Or at least, it feels trickier. It's been a lot of insomnia, a lot of sudden drops in emotional wellness, and a lot of feeling overwhelmed. One night it got so bad- I only had half the things I needed to finish finished, a really bad headache, and a full day the next morning so I couldn't wake up any earlier to finish things. So I decided to give up. Everything.
But not really.
I made a list of all the things I need to do weekly/daily and all the things I liked doing weekly/daily, and all the things I wanted to be able to do weekly/daily. This ranged from attend classes to coloring books. It's not a huge list, maybe half a page, and I skipped past things like sleep and eat since I would do those anyways, but I may not always go to class.
Then I highlighted, in red because why not, the things I needed to do for bare minimum functioning every day/week. That was Classes, Quiver (the literary magazine I work for on campus), Reading, Television, Bookclub, and Homework. None of those were negotiable or I would probably explode.
And then I did a sort of bracket system for the rest of the listed items to see what needed to get done first and what order to slowly implement them all in.
Let me pause and draw your attention to something important- neither Writing nor Blogging made the list of things I needed to do every day/week. Because while I love both of them, they're both stressors. I had to cut them out of my life. I had to give up on them- for now. It's not going to be a permanent end to either of these two passions, but they are going to be going on an unplanned and sad hiatus. Here's what's happening next.
My top priority is to finish applying for Study Abroad. This has been one hell of an application process and it's only part one. I put things off I shouldn't have and now they're biting me in the ass. I may not be able to go because of my procrastination and it feels horrible. Of course, my procrastination really all stems back to depression and anxiety, but knowing that doesn't make me feel any better about anything especially as I'm watching some of my friends finish up their applications with flying colors.
When I finish that I want to begin implementing going to the gym once a week. My goal was to go three times a week, but I never had time when I was balancing everything else out. The gym makes me feel healthier and it helps me get out a lot of that pent up energy that is adding to my insomnia. If I can go to the gym regularly twice I'll feel like I've improved and can move on.
Which is when I'm going to be getting back into playing Pokemon. It doesn't seem like a priority, or at least like it shouldn't be, but it's something on the list that relaxes me. I have a good time playing, I get some zen time, and I don't feel guilty for missing other things if I make it a point to put time aside for it. So, yeah, this made it higher than blogging and writing.
Once I feel life has just about settled I'm going to begin blogging again. This is, I'm ball parking, not going to happen until the end of February or early March. That's further than I'd like it to be, but I need to do this for my own health. That mostly stands for my book blog, but I think it will stand for this one as well. I might stop by this one and tell about how I've been doing, but I'm not making any promises.
Writing probably won't begin again until the end of March or early April. I hate taking a break from writing even more than I hate taking a break from blogging, but the stress of it was killing me and stopping me from enjoying the writing and doing a good job on it. I want to return to it, but I know I can't do that for a while.
There are a bunch of other goals on my list, but going through them all isn't important and it will take too much time. But these are the important ones.
And you might not hear from me for a while. Don't be worried. Shoot me a question on twitter if you want- that may be my only link to the internet world for a while so I'm going to try to be active.
:)
