And now I can rest.

Thank you for your service, USA veterans!

Memorial Day. Thank you to all the vets (living and passed on) who have sacrificed so much for us. We literally would not be here without you.

I just wish you had a nicer day, instead of all the rain and cold.

Then again, if you’re like me, you welcome the downtime. And you can use a break from the rest of the world. This is your day. You should enjoy it.

I’m staying off Facebook today. Twitter is another thing, but Facebook has gotten too volatile for me, of late. I need to rest. I need to sleep. Nap. Take it easy. And let my frazzled sympathetic nervous system chill from all the fight-flight. Just chill.

I worked out more strenuously, over the weekend. So, now I’m sore. And that’s good. It means my body needs to rest, and I’m more than happy to do that. I did some balance exercises this morning after riding the exercise bike, just to get myself woken up. I was going to ride a long time on the bike (I had extra dessert last night). But I got tired.

Yeah, I need to rest.

So, that’s what I’m doing. I have a bunch of reading I want to do, and a bit of writing I need to do, as well. Ideas I’ve got going, which I need to continue to develop. The nice thing is, I can just let them develop and not make myself nuts over it all. This is a big change for me, and it hasn’t been an easy one.

For years before I fell in 2004, I had a number of my own businesses going in addition to my 9-to-5 job. I was quite prodigious, I have to say. Always on the go, always cooking something up. And I created some pretty cool products and services that other people really got some use out of. I was part of some pretty exciting ventures over the years, and even though I had a ton of fatigue and sensory issues all the time, I was able to power through them and keep going on the adrenaline alone. It was so exciting, and it was very satisfying to be part of teams working “on the sly” towards common goals.

After I fell in 2004, I couldn’t keep up the pace. I tried. For years, I tried. I really pushed myself to continue to code and be involved in events and ventures. I hatched all kinds of startup plans, and I went so far as to start a formal business for one of them. I had project plans for about 20 different ventures, most of them around selling information and spinning books off into videos and online courses.

But I couldn’t get any traction on them, I’d get confused and discombobulated and turned around… and then frustrated and angry and difficult to live with. So, about 4 years ago, I started backing off on a lot of those things. And I started culling the list of ventures I had planned and waiting in the wings.

It was a hard change, because DOING BIG THINGS was always such a part of my identity and my sense-of-self.  And no longer having a full roster made me feel lost and disoriented and un-moored. Like I’d been cut loose from my anchor and set adrift in the big, wide sea.

But you know what? After a while, I realized that it was a huge relief for me to not have all those things constantly “cooking” in the background. And I realized I could actually start to relax. I became less and less reliant on Super-MEGA-PRODUCTIVITY for my sense of well-being and direction, and I actually gave myself a chance to catch up with myself.

It’s taken years for me to feel more comfortable with this — and I have to admit there are times when I revert back to my old over-doing ways. But nowadays, it comes more naturally for me to plan less, rather than more. And in the end, whatever needs to get done, gets done.

Today, though, not much really needs to get done. I’m chilling out. Relaxing. Giving my body and mind time to catch up with themselves. Without pressure. Without agenda. Just so.

 

Two more days off – sweet!

Not till tomorrow, thank you very much!

I don’t have to go to work tomorrow… Psych!  It really is great to not have to think about Monday morning on a Sunday morning.

I can just take care of things I normally can’t — the repair jobs that take more than a day to complete.

The little chores and tasks that add up over the week, and I need to get out of the way.

More sleep. More rest. Naps.

Exercise! The clock isn’t ticking with me, and I can take extra time to exercise, change things up, get a little more creative with my morning workouts. The one thing I miss on days off, is that I can’t swim at the pool, but that will come on Tuesday.

I’ve been exercising in the mornings, every single morning, and then swimming on most days. And I’ve lost about 5 pounds in the past 6 weeks. That’s a safe pace, and it won’t screw up my metabolism and make me worse off than I am now.

Best of all, I can set my own pace – go as fast or as slow as I like. And stop whenever I like. Watch good movies. Or just sit at the back door and watch the birds at the bird feeder.

It’s all good.

And I don’t have to sweat the work thing for another 18 hours.

Sweet.

The most magic 30 minutes of my day

Yeah, that’s the ticket…

Yesterday I had a nap. I stepped away from my desk for about half an hour to recharge my batteries. I walked 5 minutes to my car, which was in underground parking quite a ways from my office, put the seat back, put the headphones on, made myself comfortable, and I did my progressive relaxation.

I even got about 15 minutes of sleep in the process.

And when I woke up (which was 2 minutes before the alarm I’d set), I felt amazing. Refreshed. Alive. Human.

Then I collected myself, walked the 5 minutes back to my office, and I got on with the rest of my day.

I have heard it said that naps can disrupt your sleeping pattern, and it’s better to keep yourself awake and go to bed early. They obviously do not push themselves to perform at the level I do, from the moment I wake up in the morning. From the moment my feet hit the floor, I’m in GO mode. I have to be, because getting myself up in the morning is a monumental task that takes everything I have, some days.

Anybody who thinks I can make it through my day on a night’s worth of sleep has obviously never experienced the kind of exhaustion point I get to, around 2:00 p.m. each and every day. It is pretty brutal. By the time the afternoon rolls around, I’ve been going full-tilt-boogie for 6-8 hours. I can continue push through, sure, but I am good for nothing, the rest of the afternoon. Seriously, good for nothing. Even the things that I love doing — and that I push myself to do — turn out to be a waste of time.

Wheels spin. But they get no traction.

But if I can sleep… that is another story.

Knowing that I can sleep later on, and that I’ll be able to recharge my batteries, also makes it possible for me to push harder at the beginning of the day. When I think I’m going to have to pace myself… that my energy stores from a night’s sleep are going to have to last me all day, I hold myself back in the mornings. I’ve just now realized this, actually. When I wake up tired

Today is a completely new day — or so I keep telling myself. I’m a little tired this morning, to be honest. It’s been a long week, and I’m tired already at 7:00 a.m. I will pick up speed later today, when I am working. I’m not going into the office, so I have more time to focus on working, and less to spend driving. I also have more time to spend thinking about my own projects and making some good progress on them — without the pressure of daily performance of way too much work in way too little time.

So, there is hope for me today. I don’t have to be subjected to the upset and uncertainties of all the people around me (I came back from my nap yesterday to find my teammates huddled in a corner bitching and complaining about working conditions.) I can set my own pace and do my own work, without others interfering with their emotional incontinence.

It’s a relief not to be at the office, because the environment there is pretty depressing. It’s just a constant pressure cooker of uncertainty and chaos. When I say “chaos”, I mean there is a total lack of recognizable patterns to anything that happens. That is to say, there is no regular cadence, no regular pace, not much that’s predictable at all, from a day-to-day standpoint. It’s constant interruption and constant uncertainty. It’s not like I need any guarantees in life. But it would be nice to be able to not have everyone around me intent on interrupting my train of thought to ask me questions they can answer themselves.

It’s almost as though they are just stopping by to feel a little relief from their uncertainty.

As a matter of fact, I think that’s exactly what they’re doing — just stopping by to get a little boost to their self-confidence and sense of belonging. Because that’s what I bring to the table — respect for others, the ability to calm people down when they are all worked up, and a certain sense of calm in the center of the storm.

On the bright side, it’s great that I’m able to do this for people. On the downside, it doesn’t help me get my work done… and it’s actually keeping me from making progress in my own workload. Other people not being able to manage their own internal state, is probably the biggest hurdle to my own productivity. It’s not that their frame of mind is upsetting me. They are literally keeping me from doing my work, because they keep running to me and interrupting me and hijacking my workflow, to answer questions they never should have had to ask.

Sigh.

Anyway, in another 13 weeks, this is going to cease to be my problem. Oh, hell — if I can get things wrapped up before then, I’ll be free to go even earlier. I don’t have to be locked into a specific timeframe. I have had this July deadline in my mind, because that’s when I’m scheduled to be done with my big-ass project. But I might get things done even before that.

So, there’s some leeway there. And I’ve just thought of a way I can speed things up — some of the stuff I’m depending on others to do for me, I can do myself. They’re not experienced (or actually smart) enough to figure it out. Plus, they friggin’ hate my guts for reasons that are all about their crappy self-regulation, their incompetence, their jealousy, their brown-nosed politicking (which cannot stand the glare of objective scrutiny), and their sad work ethic (or lack thereof — I actually expect them to do their jobs, ogre that I am)… as well as shoddy management which just lets them get away with anything they damn’ well please.

So, the inmates are running the asylum. In a very big way.

And I have less than no confidence in them.

But the happy and sane part is, it doesn’t matter. They can be all pissy and pitch their hissy fits from their corner of the corporate cosmos. I can just work around everyone, and actually get sh*t done. I don’t have to be dependent on them to get their acts together, in order to move forward. And on top of that, I can be sharpening some excellent skills of my own in the meantime.

This task is a huge opportunity, but those idiots are not seeing it. I can see it plain as day, and I can hear the trumpets from heaven loud and clear. Their ineptitude is opening a door for me to step through, and that makes me incredibly happy, now that I think about it. For that matter, I can spend my weekend working on this, and actually get it all done in time for Monday — AND have it be an excellent investment in my future.

So, that’s good. And it’s giving me a big boost. It’s not all a waste of my time. It’s not all an exercise in futility. Far from it. It’s actually a positive thing, and turning it around in my mind to see the opportunity and the door opening a little more to my fantastic future is the first step in the right direction.

As long as my head is clear about this, and I’m rested and energized and keeping my batteries charged, it’s all good.

Later today I will have my nap. My magical 30 minutes to recharge my batteries. But for now, it’s…

Onward.

 

Just keep trying…

So, I’ve been noticing a couple of things lately —

Keep on keepin’ on…

First, how I can never seem to wake up feeling really rested, and I usually feel hungover when I get up in the morning, even though I’ve not done anything to warrant that.

Second, I sometimes completely forget where I am and what I’m doing for a few seconds, then I “come back” and I know where I am and what I’m doing again.

Each of these, in themselves, have the potential to trouble me. Greatly. In fact, they have really bothered me before, and I have seriously wondered if that circling specter of dementia that is often hanging over my head, is finally coming home to roost.

What I’ve realized, is that if I just keep going, I manage to find some resolution to them.

It has been a long, long time, since I woke up feeling really rested. I generally feel hungover, foggy, and not really great. I feel like I mixed cheap wine, light beer, and three different kinds of liquor, and it’s a hell of a way to wake up in the morning, every day.

It’s been bothering me that I can never seem to get on the good foot, and I feel so crappy. I try getting to bed at a decent time, then I can’t sleep through the night. Or I try to sleep in, but that’s never a guarantee. On days when I can’t sleep in, I over-sleep. On days when I can sleep in, I can’t. It’s incredibly frustrating.

I try to take a nap when I can, but it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes I literally can’t get to a place where I can lie down. Other times, I can get to a quiet place, but then I get a second wind when I’m about to step away, and before you know it, it’s the end of the day, and I’ve pushed through and kept myself going – to my own detriment.

What I have realized, after a whole lot of trial and error, is that if I can just get going in the morning, eventually I don’t feel so terrible. Especially if I can focus my attention on something that makes me feel good, like exercise and a healthy breakfast and the things I plan to do for the day, I can get myself going and get out of my funk. It’s not permanent.  And even if I feel wiped out and exhausted, if I promise myself I will rest if I need to later, that makes me feel better.

As for resting during the day, I do what I can, and if I can’t get a nap in, I don’t break my head over it. It’s bad enough being tired, without being all tweaked about it, too. Sometimes I’ll just step away to catch my breath, and that helps. Or I’ll take a brisk walk and that will make me feel better. In any case, breaking up the monotony of a dronelike day usually makes me feel better, even if I don’t get any additional rest.

It’s a fine line. It’s all a fine line. I just have to keep going.

As for losing my way and forgetting where I am, I periodically lose track of where I am when I am walking or driving. It can be very disconcerting for me to have no idea where I am, and not know what to do. Visions of “On Golden Pond” come to mind, and my head starts to race  with all my fears about Alzheimer’s and dementia and CTE. I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for me, and I can’t help but think about all the stories from friends and acquaintances about their aging parents “losing it”. I also start thinking about what I’m going to do, if I ever get to the point where my mind is completely gone, but my body is still in good shape. I think about going skydiving and not opening my chute. I think about getting a wing suit and flying into a cliff face at full speed. I think about going to see and letting myself just fall into the ocean during a storm.

The last thing I want, is to live out the rest of my days in a diaper with someone spoon feeding me. Where’s the point in that? I’ve watched elderly relatives end up in homes, nursed back to health at very advanced ages, and then lingering on, with ever-decreasing quality of life.

I’m not sure I’d ever want that. And talking to others about this, we agree — it’s better to take matters into your own hands and put an end to things that are never going to get better, than live out the rest of your days in a “twilight state” where the only ones benefiting are the retirement home coffers.

Yeah, no thanks.

Those times when I forget where I am and don’t know what’s happening are — thankfully — brief. And I find that if I just keep going, I can always find my way again. All I have to do is trust that if I’m headed in a certain direction, it’s for a reason, and that will become clear to me… eventually. I haven’t lost my marbles yet. So, I just keep going. I just keep trying. I just keep looking, keep thinking, keep engaged. And things work out. Either I find a new way, or I figure out how to make the old way work again. It’s never a clear-cut one or the other. But if I just keep trying, I can always find a way.

Of course, a day may come when things don’t work out, but that’s not here yet.

So, for today — for the moment — I will focus on what I have, the good that is in my life, and I’ll do what I can to make the most of it. Right here. Right now.

Onward.

Tired and dizzy and running late

Well, this is great… not. Our big deadline is today – what we’ve been working towards for many months, now. I was awake early, thinking that I could get to the office early. I will get there a few hours before I usually do, but after getting some exercise and eating my breakfast, I find that the clock has moved more quickly than I thought it was. I’m running a little late.

Part of the issue is that I’m pretty dizzy. So, I’ve had to be more careful and cautious about how I move, this morning. I can’t rush around, I have to pay attention to where I put each foot, how I move each part of my body. And that takes  more time than usual. I have to be very deliberate, very mindful, as I move around. And as I slowly navigated my way down the stairs and into the kitchen this morning, I thought about the times years ago when I could just move… without thinking about it and coordinating every move.

Oh, well.

Did I have sugar yesterday? Dairy? This feels like dairy vertigo — when I have dairy, I get mucus-y and my ears fill up, and I become very dizzy. I don’t think I had any milk or milk products. I must just be tired. Very tired, in fact. Yep, that’s it. I could use about 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, right now. Not gonna happen till much later today, but a person can dream…

I’ve been pushing hard for weeks, and I’m feeling it for sure. I worked most of the day at home, yesterday, starting around 4:30 a.m. getting things together and all organized. I worked till about 2, then lay down and rested for an hour, then got back up and took care of errands. It’s nuts, and I probably should have gotten more sleep than that hour nap in the afternoon, but again, this is the big deadline. The end of this project. And a bunch of us were online, sorting out last-minute things all day. I was not the only one.

These last minute things have been completely and totally needless, in my estimation. If I think too much about it, I rapidly become irate… even livid… that certain folks on the project dicked around while a number of us were voicing concerns about not having enough time to get everything done in a systematic fashion. But no, certain individuals were busy jacking around, fiddling with this and that and the other thing, rather than staying on point and being focused on what was important.

Like I said, if I think about it too much, it makes me nuts. So, I’m using my noggin and not wasting time getting all tweaked over stupid sh*t I can’t change at this point. We have time to change later. After the obnoxious SOBs who carried on like they knew what the hell they were doing, have paid the dear price and have let these lesson sink in.

That’s assuming, of course, that the lessons will sink in. From what I’ve seen, that might never happen.

Oh, what-ever. I can’t let this experience define me. I can’t let it shade my perception of myself and let it get me down. There are things I did wrong, that have contributed to the last-minute mess. Things I did wrong many months ago, and didn’t fix. Part of this is my own damned fault. And I accept that. I’ll take full responsibility for that. But my name isn’t Patsy, and I’m not taking the fall for this. Not gonna happen.

But all this internal haggling isn’t going to get me anywhere. I’ve got to keep my head above water and keep my spirit and soul intact. I’ve got to focus on the positives and carry myself in the best way possible. People are people, and I’ve been in this business long enough to know that this sort of crap happens all the time. There’s always something. And in response to what’s gone down, I have a multi-point plan that we can follow as a team and as a division, that will not only help prevent these sorts of things from happening, but also make us even better in the long run.

I read recently that sometimes people learn best from hard lessons. Trial and Error Learning (TEL) can work better for some than Errorless Learning (EL). My neuropsych tells me that for some people, EL is the only way they can really learn, and TEL is a recipe for disaster.

We’ll find out today — and in the coming weeks and months — how that’s going to shake out.

For now, I just need to get a move on. The day is waiting.

New sleeping approach is working out pretty well

My original plan to keep to a steady schedule with my sleep has gone out the window. The whole scheme of getting to bed at 10 each night and getting up at 6? Not happening. Instead, I am getting up earlier, staying up later, and taking naps during the day. We have a nap room at work, where I can sleep for an hour, if I need to. I’m up and working around 5:30-6:00 each day, and I often work till 6:30-7:00 p.m. I figure my employer can spare an hour of my time around mid-day.

It is really, really working well. Not only do I have time to do all the things I want to do, but I also recharge my batteries when they are starting to run low. Even if I do get a full 8 hours of sleep at night, around 1 p.m., I’m still running out of steam, so I might as well sleep.

It’s been hugely energizing for me. Getting 6-7 hours of sleep, then getting on with my day, and getting another hour later on (and possibly another half hour in the evening after supper) keeps me going — and at the kind of pace I want to go at.

I can’t endorse this approach for anyone else — and it might not work for others, because of work and family situations — but I can endorse it for me.

Life wants to be lived. And I can’t live it, if I’m always asleep.

Now, mind you, folks who are struggling with TBI tend to need more sleep, and this approach may not work for me in the long run. But for now, it’s working really, really well.

Toward rut-less-ness

A new trail...

I need a new gig.

Not a new job. Not a new life. But a new way of structuring my days — that incorporates a whole lot more flexibility into my schedule.

I guess I need a new kind of gig.

I took some time yesterday to step back from everything and really think things through. I worked from home and took a nap in the afternoon. Took my time at things. Didn’t focus so much on the little tasks, but thought about the larger picture… what I’m actually DOING with my life.

It’s not enough, anymore, to just take care of issues and meet requirements. I need something more. I need some meaning behind it all. When I was 25, it was enough to do what other people told me to do, and it was profoundly fulfilling to just do the things that I thought I couldn’t do.

Now, though, things are different – very different indeed. And why I do appreciate the need to deliver on promises and achieve goals, there needs to be something more to it, than just doing as I’m told.

I think a lot of people get to this point when they get to be around my age — mid-40’s — wondering “what’s it all about?” I won’t say it’s a “mid-life crisis”, because it’s not a crisis. It’s more of a check-in along the way. I also won’t say “mid-life” also because I plan to live past 90. I’ve got relatives who are in the 100-year range, and they grew up without a lot of the medical and health resources I have. I believe it’s entirely possible to life well past 90, in my case. So that’s what I’m planning for.

That means I’ve got a ways to go. And I need to pace myself. I need to not drive headlong into the future just for the sake of driving. I need to live my life fully — mindfully. I’ve tried it other ways, and I got hurt a lot, when I did it that way.

I don’t want to get hurt, anymore. It’s time-consuming, soul-consuming, and very, very expensive. Hard to bounce back from. Been there, done that. Still kind of there, in fact. Don’t much care for it.

So, back to this “rut business”. I’ve noticed that I’m getting more and more tired, as time goes on. I’ve changed up my sleep schedule, because I just don’t do well with going to bed early. But I don’t really sleep in, either. I’m getting maybe 6 hours of sleep a night. 7 if I’m lucky. At the start, it wasn’t a big deal, but it’s catching up with me.

I really need to start taking naps around mid-day, and stop pushing myself through. Or at the very least, step away and do progressive relaxation for 15-20 minutes. I feel SO much better, when I am at least slightly rested. I’ve also noticed that being tired takes all the joy out of what I’m doing.

Sure, I may be feeling high and pumped from the extra adrenaline, but it’s taking a toll on both my body and my spirit. I want to enJOY what I’m doing with myself each day. And I can’t do that, when I’m overtired and struggling just to keep awake. When I’m rested, everything just flows… and I don’t need as much structure, as much of a rut, to keep me going. I just keep going, because it feels great, and I’m really into what I’m doing. When I’m rested, when I’m alert, I’m so much better able to participate and contribute. Because I’m all there — and I don’t have to funnel my energy into the most basic activities. Rest takes care of those for me, so I can focus my attention on the higher things. The really, really important things — like what all I’m doing with my life.

And why.

I really do need to be disciplined about this nap business. Really make the effort. Do this nap thing on-purpose, regularly, for six weeks — that’s how long it takes to develop a habit — and see what it gets me. I suspect it’s going to really help. I’ll have to report in regularly about this… now I’m curious.

Well, speaking of discipline, it’s time for me to get ready for work. I’ve had my exercise and my breakfast, and I’ve written a little bit to keep myself on track. Next up — the rest of my day, wherein I work with others towards common goals and greater prosperity for us all.

ONward.