I’m struggling with what to write this week. That’s not new. What’s newER is that I’m struggling to do a lot of things this week. Everything is feeling very heavy. Like one of those nightmares where you need to run quickly or fight to defend yourself but you move as if the air surrounding you has the viscosity of molasses.

There have been a couple of good days, where I’ve had energy and a little motivation and managed to get some things done and feel okay about it. But they weren’t very frequent this week. I’ve been feeling rather tired and despondent. Nothing is really going well. Nothing is completely falling apart either, it’s just that everything is taking a lot of extra effort. Everything is challenging right now. Some of it I’m not ready to talk about in this kind of forum, but some of it I will. If I can stop chewing off my fingernails long enough to type.

Work is rough. I won’t get into specific jobs, as you know I have many, or specific aspects. I don’t really think anyone that I work for or with reads this, but you never know, and I do want to keep the jobs that I do have, even though nothing is near as lucrative as it was in early March. I’m doing new things and learning new skills. I feel that I’ve improved in the last few months in several ways. I’m marketing myself in different and more effective ways. I’m ‘thinking outside of the box’ more often and I’m taking, and acting upon, any and all suggestions and feedback that I’m presented with. I’ve been doing this since this whole thing began and it’s not enough.

Yes, there are always going to be ways to learn and grow, but as a fitness professional in a pandemic, it’s really difficult to recruit new people. I understand that I need to keep trying. I also understand that a lot of people aren’t comfortable with coming into the gym right now no matter how safe it is. I know that everyone in my profession is in the same boat and we’re all probably some level of exhausted, but it’s really easy to start thinking that you’re the only one “not getting it” when all you’re hearing is about your ‘opportunities for growth.’

There are… let’s call them ‘lucid moments’ where I can step back and objectively say that I AM in fact a good teacher/trainer/manager, etc and recognize that this is just business and it is much easier to say what they want you to do than acknowledge what you’ve done. But a lot of the time, I’m wondering when I’m going to get laid off because there just isn’t enough demand. And this week, I’ve frequently wondered if I shouldn’t just give up on this. Maybe I’m not cut out for it.

I do have outlets. I have both physical and creative outlets. I’ve been waking up in the dark at 5am every day. Some days it’s because I have to teach at 6am, but most days it’s because I want to get my run in before work. If I don’t get it in before work, it doesn’t happen. It’s like pulling teeth. I always feel better after I run. Even if it was a horrible, crappy run. I am fully aware of this, and yet, even on a beautiful, sunny, temperate day, if I don’t get it done right after I get up, it doesn’t happen. I can’t summon the energy.

Garden veggies! Paying attention to health.

I write. I have a virtual group that I meet up with every Sunday. Most of the time, I leave the group with new ideas. Inspired to make edits and improve upon my submission. Lately, I leave depleted. I feel like my ideas are crap and I don’t have the knowledge or skill to turn it around. I know that this isn’t true. I do. But some days I can’t make myself feel that it isn’t true.

The political backdrop doesn’t help. There’s so much wrong and I feel so incapable of fixing any of it and yet I desperately want to do something. I applied to be a poll worker because that’s something useful that I can do that won’t drain already tapped finances. I haven’t heard anything back yet. I was hoping to get in and do some early voting work as I don’t get paid vacation or time off.

I’ve been limiting my time on social media. I’m still posting my ‘work’ stuff because I need to keep in the game and I will still post the occasional kitten photo because the kittens are a source of unfiltered joy that I desperately need and also want to share. But I’ve been actively trying to consume less. It just sends me into more of a spiral. And I feel less connected because of that because right now I only see people at work through a mask or on the computer.

I am paying attention to my health and I am seriously working to keep my diet on track. (And by diet, I mean watching my caffeine intake, eating ‘real foods’, avoiding sugar, yadda yadda.) I’m making sure that I’m in bed for a solid eight hours a night. I wake up frequently. Sometimes because kittens are running an obstacle course race through the house. Usually once a night because Dean comes to bed much later than I do and no matter how hard he tries to be quiet, I always wake up when he comes in. And sometimes I have a crazy epic nightmare and I don’t want to be in it anymore and so I wake myself up fully to get out of that horrible world. And some nights, like last night, it’s all three. So I’m trying to get good sleep. I’m trying my best.

I realize, and tell myself all the time, that I have it a lot better than many people. And that I am going to be fine and I just have to take today, right now, and do the best I can with it and stop worrying so much about what’s to come. Unfortunately, I’ve come to realize that there’s a point at which recognizing that a lot of people are struggling worse than you are doesn’t help.

A few years ago, Dean had a seizure, the first one that I had witnessed, and although I had hoped to never see one, I knew what to do. Because I had researched. I wrote a blog post about it and in that post I talked about my best friend from childhood, Natasha, and how we are still friends to this day in part because we are both disaster planners. We look for the possible disaster, prep for it as much as possible, and then try and go about enjoying our lives, knowing that we’ve done as much as we can. When I was a kid, I used to actively think about all of the possible ways a situation could go wrong. My logic being that it could only go wrong in a way that I had not considered, so by thinking of as many as possible, I was basically creating a talisman against those options.

Me. Running through a blizzard in Chicago circa 2011. Illustrating the not giving up thing.

It’s possible that I am just tired of creating talismans. It’s also possible that there is no way to plan or prepare for any of the disasters that I am currently envisioning and that makes me feel … gosh, I really can’t think of a word, but it’s not a cheerful one.

I am not giving up. Just because I may feel like it sometimes. I am very tired. Most of us are. I generally try to end these on some kind of up beat note. The fact that I’m not giving up is the best that I can do right now. But maybe someone else is riding this spiral with me and maybe it will help them to read this and feel like they’re not alone.

And that would make me feel a little more useful.

Heading into a spiral. Anyone want anything?