MOne thing that this time off has done for me is to force a pause. When life keeps coming at you, it can be tough to process stuff on top of the physical health limitations. What Ive discovered is that I have some things going on internally that needed maintenance. I’m doting on them. So well see where those things lead. But the “down time” has been very helpful for helping me assess many things.
At the same time, the stress of an international quarantine and a constant struggle with fatigue, means that I’m constantly struggling with my mental health. And bad habits such as impulse shopping are showing some of their worse tendencies. And since I’m still waiting for the insurance company to hopefully (knock on wood) approve my disability – finances aren’t great right now. The one bit of good news is that the IRS finally recognized we are qualified for our payments. So we were able to enter our direct deposit info and just await a pay date for that.
12:30pm. Thursday. April 23, 2020.
I should be retiring to the couch now, but watching the “The Pandemic is a Portal” teach in with Arundhati Roy and Imani Perry. So I’m listening to this before heading downstairs to rest. I’m really struggling. I started the day with a lower level of fatigue but its peaking now. And I am barely doing anything. I have barely started on my steps. Today will be a struggle.
12am. Friday night. April 24, 2020.
Today was a solid day. I did have fatigue issues of course but probably my lightest day since Monday. Yesterday I was Uber conscious of not over doing it and that worked. I also managed to hit my goal for the week with steps. Which means that tomorrow I crank it up a notch. The goal is to sustain for 5 days and then gradually increase. That is similar to what I was doing before. But this week I reset to where I was before I ran into big trouble. So this next step is where things went further south. I have to get past this step though. I’m barely hanging around amount of steps I take when I go to the office territory. It’s an important step to get past this wall.
But I definitely rolled back a bit on upper body stuff. Not that I was doing much before. But I’m intentionally limiting that. One step at a time so to speak.
11am. Monday. April 27, 2020.
Well, things didn’t go so well on Saturday. Very heavy fatigue. I thought since I was mostly restful on Friday I would be better off than I was. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I guess just keeping up my steps was enough to disable me for the day. We got one game in early that I limped through so to speak. I rode my adrenaline through a top 100 video recording. Then had to hit the couch for the rest of the daytime and we had to cancel plans for a zoom gaming session. I did manage a little of mini gaming in the evening. But that didn’t last long.
Sunday was slightly better. I was fatigued for sure but I managed more gaming, including the constantly rescheduled zoom gaming session. But by the end of that I was so tired. So I’m not sure how I managed a top 100 video recording (just one more to go!) but I rode my adrenaline so hard that I was almost spastic.
Not surprisingly, today I am extremely fatigued. I’m at my desk but I can tell that isn’t lasting long. Today should be my shower day but I lack the ability to muddle through a shower right now. That is a bit soul crushing.