love letter for the tired
I have been increasingly tired for a couple weeks now… just feeling like I can’t catch up, and it’s taking its toll on me.
This happens to me periodically, out of my love for life and all I want to do, and my struggle sometimes to be kind to myself and set realistic expectations and occasional needed limitations.
Usually, when this happens, I don’t notice the fatigue and overwhelm creeping up on me, until I feel surrounded, like I am getting dragged down into a whirlpooling swimming pool. Then I suddenly look up and look around, a little shocked, like “what?! I thought we were just having a nice summer float! What’s going on, where did this come from?” 😜
Of course, it doesn’t generally come out of the blue, and there are usually some pretty solid reasons for the hurricane/whirlpool.
Luckily, even though this is something I continually struggle with from time to time, I am getting better at noticing. I know this about myself, and I am learning how to catch this sooner instead of getting buried in burnout. I am learning how to live with myself and love myself and my life — including taking care of myself.
I started consciously recognizing how stressed I was feeling last night, and I sat down to write about it this morning and to check in with myself and figure out what I need and how I can help myself.
Hi, Bri. What do you need today? How can I help you? I love you, I want to help. You deserve tending and support.
I was wondering what has been going on under the surface in my mind and my heart. How are my emotions doing? Am I starting to spin out without realizing it, just going more and more and faster and faster and losing myself in the mix? I made a list of all the things that have been on my mind, everything I’ve been trying to do and manage, and everything that’s been adding stress (even if also joy!), and the list was startlingly long. (“Oh, so THAT explains it!” 😜)
Even if the list is full of good things we really care about — as is the case for me right now — and things are exciting and mostly going well, and we want to keep investing in them… even then, everything requires something of us, and fills part of our limited capacity. That means too many great things can still result in a negative toll.
Sometimes it’s hard to do a little excavation and carefully peel back the layers to see what might be living unconsciously and unmet inside you. But it’s always worth it.
Today’s post is really long because it’s a piece (yes, just part! 😂 I wrote many pages.) of my reflection and processing this morning.
I wanted to share in case this is something you can relate to, in case I have even the slightest bit of a life raft to throw into the whirlpool for you when you need it. ❤
This pressure has been building inside me.
Thank god I’m noticing and letting it out.
I didn’t really even totally realize this list was so long or that I’m this stretched thin.
I do not have to carry this around with me.
I do not have to manage all this shit and shine.
I don’t have to keep up with everything at the same time.
Of course I’m tired.
How does this happen, always without me realizing it?
I think all these areas of life are so important and beautiful, and they matter to me, and I enjoy them, and I WANT to invest in them and propel them forward… I don’t want to let anything fall behind. I’m still so unskilled at deciding (literally comes from a Latin root word, decidere, which is a combination of two words: de = 'OFF' + caedere = 'CUT'). I struggle so much with cutting things out or giving certain things a break so I can focus on others. I just want it all, all the time. No delay. I don’t want to put things off or “lose time.”
Damn, I just read Four Thousand Weeks, too, and yet here I am. 😆 (Excellent book. Speaks to this dilemma and so much more.)
This is very hard for me.
Logically, and sometimes experientially and engagingly, I know this doesn’t work, and I know I can be much happier and more attuned and devoted and present when I am willing to cut off. I know I want these beautiful things in my life but cannot give 100% to all of them, all the time.
What is my path forward now?
I think I’m going to skip the entire rest of my “to do list” today, do my job with ease and patience, and just try to be comfy at my desk. When I get home, I get to heat up leftovers (no cooking tonight, thank goodness!), and I think I’ll lay around and do nothing. Stay off social media all evening. Play Stardew. Watch movies and shows. Get some alone time. Snuggle Jake.
Rest.
I need rest.
Emotionally? I’m feeling a little spent. Grateful to be noticed. I was telling Jake last night how much I long for him to notice me and give me loving attention and affirmation and much I love all the times he does… and that’s true, but I am also realizing now how much I long for myself to do the same thing for me.
Wow.
That’s powerful.
Not a new lesson, necessarily.
But how beautiful that we can give ourselves these things. We can show up and meet our own needs, with compassion and self-trust.
How amazing that sometimes what we want from others is also something we’ve been accidentally starving ourselves of.
I love myself. I want to take really good care of myself.
I need rest.
I deserve tending and support.
I deserve endless oceans of my own love and understanding.
I deserve to sit with myself in the beauty and struggle of my own humanity.
I deserve breaks and a slower pace, whenever I need or want it.
Nothing will disintegrate if I slow down or don’t do something today… or for a while.
Take however long it takes.
Let yourself stay in your life and stay in gentle, grateful awareness for your days.
Here I am.
Hello to now.
I’ve just turned on Hollow Coves, which I love, and “Hello” is playing… even their music video for it is darling. 🙂
In micro moments and actions such as this – turning on music that gives me sustenance and magic – I can care for myself.
I can make the experience of my life better.
I can stop the spinning and flurrying and notice the boulders I have been piling upon my own back for a little too long now.
And I can squat down… and let them fall.
Pressure release.
Calm.
Stillness.
Today, I am BEING, no longer DOING. 💖💖💖
I don’t have to make any more plans or account for tomorrow or this weekend or the trip I’m coordinating or paying off our credit card debt or my own future development…
Not today. Not in this moment.
Never in any time it is wearing me down more than building me up, never in any moment it is taking more than it’s giving, never when I am no longer serving myself and the wholehearted life I long for.
…okay, sometimes. Sometimes, even when I am tired and life seems to be taking more than it’s giving… because sometimes we don’t have a choice but to carry on and take care of what’s set before us, and sometimes those things aren’t optional. But even in those nonoptional, tiring times, there are ways to soften and bring all the lovingkindness I can to myself. This is the path I choose.
Also? Today isn’t one of those times. I have a lot of agency and freedom and flexibility right now. MUCH of what I’m doing is totally optional.
I just get a little overtaken and consumed by my best of intentions to do it all, live a great story, build a beautiful adventure, enjoy everything life has to offer, etc…
And I forget that my great story, my best adventures, my richest enjoyment REQUIRES rest and coziness and settled ease. This life can only be relished if I am also willing to “miss out” sometimes – precisely so I don’t miss out on myself, my own self-compassionate care, my own best tending and presence, precisely so I am recharged and whole enough to keep going and keep adventuring and building.
My life isn’t a problem to be won or an equation to be solved.
It is an experience to be lived, and I want to live and rest well.
Reminder to myself forever and ever: laying on the couch watching Netflix doesn’t mean you aren’t living. It doesn’t make you any less alive for your story. It doesn’t mean you’re disengaging or doing anything wrong. Cutting off doesn’t mean you’ll flounder or go backwards or have regrets. Spending some time doing nothing and removing expectations and letting every single thing settle – just completely sink in and untense – does not make you any less worthy, accomplished, capable, wise, intelligent, smart, striving, or well-lived.
Wow.
Sometimes when I write these things, they seem so simple that my ego gives a little pained sting of embarrassment that I even need reminding. (“I guess I haven’t learned that yet.”)
But it doesn’t matter, because my whole heart and soul is singing and soaring and settling into freedom and relief with each new word I type.
I am grateful for every discovery and rediscovery that lets me find my way back to myself again and again and again, in every season of my life, no matter how many times it takes, no matter how cyclical or repeated, no matter how simple.
I am grateful to love and care for myself.
I am grateful to have the honor and privilege and difficult, worthwhile job of reminding myself until the end of time:
You are already enough.
Just as you are.
Now sit down, and settle in.
I love you.
