Reclusive, depressed, or sick?

Nope, just SAD. I finally figured it out and ordered a light therapy lamp. I had one when I lived in New England and I know it will help. I wrote most of this post before I figured it out, though 🙂 Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) include everything I’ve been feeling for the last 6 weeks …

Since coming home from the hospital, I’ve spent a lot of time alone in the apartment. Well, alone with the cats and the TV. I’m not really interested in hanging around people and being social. My friends here are lovely and I enjoy their company – but not now. Since the retina tear, I’ve also been basically sitting around because I’m not supposed to do anything strenuous and to avoid having my head down. The quiet time alone feels like vacation.

I’m not sitting around moping or feeling sorry for myself. I dose off in the chair frequently and am really tired all the time even though I’m getting lots of good sleep at night. But I have that deep chest cough and facial pain, which usually means a sinus infection. I’ve had both for weeks. Am I depressed? Maybe. Actually, I know I am and I’m already on an anti-depressant which has helped enormously.

My shoulders hurt just being attached to my body. After propelling myself around on mostly carpeted hallways, my arms are tired and the shoulders hurt more, and my legs are often throbbing from being down for hours instead of elevated in my lift chair. But mostly it’s the idea of having to get myself back home after being out for something like working on the community puzzle in the library or going to Bingo or exercise class that tires me out before I even go.

I don’t feel lazy staying at home. It’s really just taking care of myself. I can sometimes find someone who can help me push my way home again – but so many people use walkers or scooters and can’t actually do much to help. So it’s up to me. I’m more than ready for the power chair.

And that chair will let me get outside in the sunshine much more easily than I can do now. I can’t wait.

Practicing Self Care

My goal for the next few weeks is to practice self-care. It’s a lot easier to just sit around and complain about the knee and the back and how they’re holding me back. Which they are. But in the meantime, there are things I can do and work on.

Sleep: I haven’t been sleeping well or enough. Whatever the reason, I wake up tired and stay that way for much of the day, which could mean a bunch of things: sick, allergies, staying up too late, uncomfortable bed, stress. But what I think it means is that my CPAP is set too low, meaning I don’t get enough oxygen. Back in July at my annual visit with the sleep doctor, my air pressure rate was decreased from 13 to 11. We thought that, with the weight loss and sinus surgery, it was too high. I think we pushed it too low. So I made an appointment to consult again and have it adjusted.

I also spend too much time reading after I get to bed, and get up at 5am to give myself time to wake up. Maybe I need that because, duh, I’m not getting enough sleep. So I’m making a commitment to turn off the light at 9:30 p.m. and to add 15-30 minutes to my alarm so I get a little more sleep at that end, too. I’m also considering putting coffee back on my food plan. I stopped drinking it when I got on Noom because I didn’t like using that many calories on creamer and didn’t like the coffee without creamer. But they are my calories and I can do what I want with them, and I miss the taste and the ritual of coffee – with creamer.

Cleaning. I hate cleaning. I like having things BE clean, just not doing it myself. I had a house cleaner who came every 2 weeks until just before Covid when she had a double knee replacement and then retired. I’ve been doing my own cleaning since then and I still hate it. Today I called The Cheerful Cleaning Company again and am trying to set up a regular cleaning schedule. They did my post-construction deep clean and were amazing. It’s not cheap and it’s actually a luxury, but I need this.

Church. I work in a church that I no longer attend for worship, having joined a local Episcopal Church a few months ago. My problem has been actually getting there in person because I found myself doing tech support for Work Church on Sunday morning, which is now doing Facebook Live as well as Zoom for streaming Bible Study. I’ve reserved a spot for in-person church at Worship Church only to not actually go. This week I delayed making a reservation until today. I’m going to the 11:00 a.m. service this Sunday, which means I can be home while Work Church is doing technical things in case there’s a call, but I can still get to my own Worship Church. I need it for grounding and learning my new community.

Hair and Toes. I put these in the same category because I try to “do” them on the same schedule. I love getting a pedicure because I sit in that fancy massage spa chair for an hour with little kneading action on the back. Plus someone else spends a lot of time working on my feet and then they feel better and look beautiful. I’m currently out of whack on my “doing them on the same schedule” plan but am going this afternoon for a haircut. Toes were done last week.

Massage. I have two gift certificates for a body massage but have been holding off because of covid concerns. It’s been 9 months since I’ve had one and that’s a very long time for me to go. My body is off balance because of the back and knee problems on the right side and my muscles are tight knots strung together like beads on a chain. This week I’m calling both places to find out their cleaning procedures to see how safe they feel, and if they are acceptable (and I’m picky), I will make an appointment. By the end of the week.

Weight loss – yeah, I know, I shouldn’t have put this last. No one can do it for me and it’s important. But it can’t be the only thing in my life. I’ve spent too much time obsessed with food, diets, eating plans, calories, counting, tracking, measuring, etc. I’ve really enjoyed just being essentially in one place for almost 2 months. I don’t want to stay here, but right now it feels good. When I’m ready to buckle down, I will. As long as I don’t forget how I got here.

Actually, looking at this list shows that my idea of self care is mostly having someone else do things for me. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But there are things I can and need to do for myself. My big one is to remember my goal of preparing, compiling, and publishing genealogy books for each grandparent’s line that include full size images of original records such as census pages and church documents. The book I did for my brother 2 years ago omitted these because no one really cared except me. But as a research tool, something that is a “brain and record dump” of my genealogy program, this is a huge goal. I’ve been working on the family lines for 50 years and know that it may be a long time, if ever, before anyone else in the family is interested in picking it up. So I want to get as much out of my head and my computer into a printed form. It will not be finished by the end of December, but I’m again making progress.

2011 Hate-Loss Challenge

Ellen over at Fat Girl Wearing Thin has issued a challenge, not on losing the most weight in the month of January, but to use the next month to help change the habit of negative self-talk.  Instead of a resolution to diet, exercise, or changing physical things (and we know how long those resolutions last), this is a challenge to rethink the inside part.

I do find that I belittle myself and beat myself up using negative words like lazy, stupid, inadequate.  They’re not as awful as they were two years ago, but they’re still there.  So I was pleased to learn about Ellen’s challenge: “January will be the month that I set in motion a healthy habit  to rid my vocabulary of words that aim to destroy my self-esteem.”  How cool is that?  From Ellen’s blog:

Rules: There is only one rule: At least once a day you must attempt to use one or more of these words in your vocabulary about yourself – and mean it:  strong, courageous, beautiful/handsome, better, unique, remarkable, confident, conditioned, fascinating, pleasing. I encourage you to say the words out loud. Listen to how they sound as they are defining you!

Extra credit: mind-blowing, wicked-hot,  awe-inspiring, sexy, sensational.

Off Limits: Words you can not use:  failure, undeserving, incompetent, lazy, no-good, fat, unattractive, sloppy, defeated, unworthy.

One Final Thought: It’s OK to be angry.  It’s OK to have off-days; just don’t let those feelings consume you.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and never, ever let your weight define you.

I printed out the rules for home and work and will report on my progress.

Energy and Self-Management

In a problem solving workshop this week, the presenter talked about systems analysis of energy and self-management. The principles apply whether you’re talking about energy for work or energy in our personal lives. There was a nifty little diagram that I can’t reproduce here because I scribbled all over my copy so you’ll have to bear with my words instead.

Basically it works like this: we are being pulled in opposite directions, with energy builders on one side and energy depleters on the other side. The stronger the builders are, the more energy we have. Similarly, the stronger the depleters are, the less energy we have. And if we can convert a depleter into a builder by working on it, we boost the energy by leaps and bounds.

On the Energy Builder side we have:

• Shower / be clean
• Perceptive focus
• Energy awareness
• Associate with energetic others
• Listening skills
• Act energetically (fake it ’til you make it)
• Flexibility
• Nutrition/exercise
• Humor and fun
• Positive self talk

On the Energy Depleters side we have:

• Inhibited
• Non-challenging work
• Taking hits
• Procrastination
• Stress and burnout
• Inability to handle change
• Worry

Of all of these, the most important is positive self talk. Negative talk reinforces negative beliefs, so we need to actively do self coaching to document and reinforce the things we do well.

As soon as I heard this bit, my brain sidetracked to thinking about what we do to ourselves on our merry whirl of weight loss and blogging. When I listen to others, to myself, and read blogs, I find litanies of all things negative. We ate badly, we didn’t journal, we didn’t exercise, we are fat, we are ugly, we snacked too much, we didn’t need that piece of cake, our clothes don’t fit, etc. etc. etc.

Sound familiar?

When we’re in that kind of a funk, those energy depleters are pulling hard. We procrastinate on getting back on track. We find ourselves unable to handle change so we resort to the familiar and caloric. We worry about our choices, our appearance, our health, our out of control lives. We get stressed and burn ourselves out. And binge.

What if, instead of focusing on the negative, we really try to remember and reinforce the things we actually ARE doing? I didn’t snack this afternoon. I walked at lunch. I did 20 min. on the treadmill. I tried a new food. I had good hair today. I look good in this color. I went to my meeting and participated. I planned my food. I got 7 hours of sleep. I journaled. I tried today.

It’s so easy in the blogs to be down ourselves but to be honest, reading enough of it – and writing it myself – just makes me tired and drained. Focusing on the positive doesn’t mean giving up on making changes or pretending that we don’t make mistakes. Because obviously we do.

But I’m going to try, especially going into the stressful holiday time, to concentrate on building my energy and not depleting it. How about you?

Almost Ready for Company

I’ve been counting down the days before my parents come, using my list of Things That Need to be Done. It’s broken down by room and I’ve been trying to get one done a night. But I hate working around the house when it’s dark outside and after I’ve been gone all day doing Work. I figured that having a way to break things down would make it at least manageable.

One thing, well okay, two things, I’m doing this week have nothing to do with the parents’ visit and everything to do with personal boundaries. Yesterday I went to my water aerobics class and added an extra 30 minutes before we started, so I must have walked miles in the pool. It really was a hard workout but I’m getting to know what the exercises are and how to do them without hurting the knee but still feeling it in the muscles. Of course afterward the whole class hopped into the whirlpool and chatted some more.

Although I know I’ll be ultra-anxious tomorrow, since they come on Friday, I’m still going to tomorrow’s WA class. I need to set that time apart for myself to do something physical FOR myself. I’ll have to miss at least one next week but I deserve the workout and I’m going to carve out the time to do it even if it means not cleaning something that no one would probably notice anyway.

The other thing I did for myself was go to Weight Watchers for a weigh in and stay for the meeting. We talked about butterflies, and how to be able to fly we first have to be willing to let go of being a caterpillar. There were 6 things on the list, most of which I’ve already forgotten because I have a memory like a steel sieve. But I noticed that when the leader asked us for ways we could work on “Believe in Yourself”, we all sort of drew blanks. We could come up with motivational things but I think we really didn’t believe all that much in ourselves and that we could do what we’ve set out to do.

I know this is true for me. I believe that I am a good person, a good friend, and have lots of positive qualities. I’m not saying I’m a schmuck or evil because I’m obese or because I’ve gained back some of the weight I’ve lost. But I’m going to have to think about this one, what it means to believe in myself and live that out. I think it could be an important piece.

For now, though, I’m waiting for the dryer to stop. There is wine waiting to chill, the study is dusted, the bedding for the Aerobed has been pulled out of the storage chest, and the freezer had lots of protein. I have a batch of browned ground turkey, onions, peppers, and garlic ready to thaw and use in meat sauce with pasta for Friday’s supper. A basket holds tour books, maps, and brochures of things to do.

I haven’t seen my parents since Thanksgiving and can’t wait to see them. The visit is really about the time together, not about whether I’ve fixed the perfect meal or dusted everything that doesn’t move.