I've got several posts I've been meaning to create....but I've just been feeling overwhelmed. It's all great - but all change is stressful, as they say, and I've had nothing but change for the past 10 years....or more? I've only just now started settling into something, but even that is a lot of life change, what with getting married, the health changes, the crooked school/career path. I'm in the right place - the right job, the right relationship....yet as I try to stay afloat and keep going with it all, it still feels overwhelming, which leaves me feeling a bit lost and sad like a child. But for me, anything other than staying home all day, staring at my collections and reading....doing whatever I want, whenever I want, mostly entirely alone....anything that takes me away from that is a bit jarring. So that is why I have this natural feeling of being lost - stretched away from "myself" - that place I am in when I can be totally alone with absolutely no constraints placed on me, left entirely to my own devices and with everything I want/need around me. Which is no realistic way to live or survive, of course. Once I have gotten into the routine of my new life, I hope the jarred feeling will subside. I hope I can learn to actually live, as they say - because, as unpopular as this might sound here (?) I do not think it's truly living to the fullest when I am just constrained to a bubble by a need for such a total sense of control. Life is not controlled like that...so I may benefit from learning to flow with it rather than fighting it so rigidly. Not having time to just think and write to process everything isn't helping...I think? The fact is, though, when I do have time to write to process things....I will literally write most of the day and night, for several days/nights in a row. There is no time for that. I'm done rambling I suppose....I start out much more independently tomorrow at work - a blessing as well as a scare. The "good" thing, if I can manage it, is the new constraints and needs of this new life would demand me to rise to the challenge in ways that would be healthy for me - I would be stronger, taking better care of myself, getting better at achieving my goals rather than losing them in bouts of anxiety and escapism.
Edit/update:
I've just called out sick. That is something that seems logical for a severe cold or flu....but I decided to do it for mental health and the exhaustion that comes with it. I still feel guilty/sneaky, because that's not what anyone things when you call out - and I certainly am not going to advertise it. But in the past, I would just ignore, ignore, ignore what was going on inside and keep pushing through - and some of that is needed, but sometimes that's a bad thing that leads to worse problems later. Self-diagnosing as an Aspie has made me reconsider this - to give myself some more leeway, to realize I legitimately need to slow down, but on the brakes sometimes, if I want to be able to keep going rather than crashing and burning. I haven't been sleeping or eating properly, I haven't been exercising at all, I've been too stressed out and overwhelmed, and doing precious little to combat that stress - for me, it has to be actively managed and combatted through lifestyle and mental strategies. Maybe it will always be like trying to beat back or stay ahead of/ontop of a wave that is always there from an ocean of stressors? (I am not a beach person, but sometimes I think if I were a surfer I'd have a really useful internal analogy for how to deal with life.)
There are so many things on my plate now - learning all the skills and knowledge I need for work, plus navigating a bunch of medical problems for myself, my dog, and my husband - we're trying to make a lot of changes and figure out medical appointments, as well as dealing with my student loans....there's not enough free time for recuperating and tackling these other problems. I think I'm also just overloaded right now upfront - some of these things will be easier to manage once I've gotten the initial details worked out so that I can settle into a routine, even if it's a more complicated one - but right now I can't even settle into a routine - I'm hopping around on one foot or the other all over the place.
Edit/update:
I've just called out sick. That is something that seems logical for a severe cold or flu....but I decided to do it for mental health and the exhaustion that comes with it. I still feel guilty/sneaky, because that's not what anyone things when you call out - and I certainly am not going to advertise it. But in the past, I would just ignore, ignore, ignore what was going on inside and keep pushing through - and some of that is needed, but sometimes that's a bad thing that leads to worse problems later. Self-diagnosing as an Aspie has made me reconsider this - to give myself some more leeway, to realize I legitimately need to slow down, but on the brakes sometimes, if I want to be able to keep going rather than crashing and burning. I haven't been sleeping or eating properly, I haven't been exercising at all, I've been too stressed out and overwhelmed, and doing precious little to combat that stress - for me, it has to be actively managed and combatted through lifestyle and mental strategies. Maybe it will always be like trying to beat back or stay ahead of/ontop of a wave that is always there from an ocean of stressors? (I am not a beach person, but sometimes I think if I were a surfer I'd have a really useful internal analogy for how to deal with life.)
There are so many things on my plate now - learning all the skills and knowledge I need for work, plus navigating a bunch of medical problems for myself, my dog, and my husband - we're trying to make a lot of changes and figure out medical appointments, as well as dealing with my student loans....there's not enough free time for recuperating and tackling these other problems. I think I'm also just overloaded right now upfront - some of these things will be easier to manage once I've gotten the initial details worked out so that I can settle into a routine, even if it's a more complicated one - but right now I can't even settle into a routine - I'm hopping around on one foot or the other all over the place.
