addends: chronicles, pt. 2
Originally written November 9, 2023
Part 2 of a 4-part series
I wake up, and the day begins, as if I’ve been flung from a catapult, already a blur, already struggling to keep up, to find my footing, to fit it all in. Rush, rush, rush.
It isn’t always like this, but it seems it is more often than not.
I am tired. When my body wakes, it feels groggy and heavy, and my eyelids feel too sticky, like velcro being peeled apart. They want to close again.
It’s not that I can’t get up; I have well-trained myself to be used to early mornings and to get up and begin my goals, go to the gym before work, get the morning done… I can push through the groggy, heavy-lidded, first-thing exhaustion, the symptoms of not enough sleep, the urges to go back to bed. I can resist all of this and get up and workout and start my day at 4:15 anyway. I can wake up and then usually find energy once I’m moving. I can.
It’s just that after three months of doing this, I am starting to worry about the long-term effects. I am starting to fret and feel too much friction to want to keep this up. I can see the harm it does on a daily basis, just in my energy levels, soreness, and recovery, and I worry about my long-term ability to build muscle, heal my body, function well, have healthy systems and immunity, be strong, and live a long time. I worry about the constant low-grade deprivation. I worry about how it stacks up.
Also, I do not particularly enjoy the rush. I don’t love being hit with the realization that I haven’t had a chunk of time in a while to just breathe and be and relax and float through space and time with no demands for a short bit. Sometimes it has been so long since I’ve rested or played. Sometimes I crave a lack of schedule. Sometimes I crave more openness.
This isn’t about morning workouts or how often I go to the gym — I love the gym and much prefer working out in the morning, thanks to how accomplished, empowered, and energetic it makes the rest of my day. But this is about the lack of sleep, what time I can get to bed, how early I work, meaning how early I must wake up to fit the gym in beforehand. It’s just about feeling packed tight and stretched thin sometimes.
How would I chronicle my todays?
They feel amazing. They feel happy and hard and successful and satisfied. They feel worthwhile and full of contribution. They feel exciting and useful and creative. I feel proud and, mostly, delighted. I’m having a blast. My life is fun. My work is wonderful. I’m making gains in the gym. We’re getting to a pretty sweet spot with our house and chore routines, starting to establish organized closet practices for the first time ever, cleaning up once a week or so, sharing the cooking and dishes and laundry… so my home is cozier, and that’s not nothing.
Each of these things is important.
How would I chronicle my todays?
I’m tired. I’m so tired, and why is being an adult so challenging??? Do I need to just stop thinking of it as hard? Do I need to rewire my brain to believe this isn’t that hard? Do I need to accept its difficulty and remember I can rise to the occasion and overcome hard things?
I often feel like I can’t keep up. Lately, it’s been a strange contrast between either feeling like I am doing pretty damn well, or I’m falling constantly more behind.
My life is full. It is so full of good things and beauty and so much I want to keep up with! It is exciting and awesome, and I can’t ever decide what to say no to. There’s too much! How do you solve a math problem when all the addends are too many for the sum total?
This seems like a great problem to have, but it is still, at times, just that: a problem.
If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.
If I cannot do all the things I want to do and all the things I need to do, AND still take care of myself, then something has to give, right?
