Whoa girl.

Ever have one of those days where you feel overwhelmed and lazy and bored and paralyzed and bad all at the same time? That’s today. It was a fun, kinetic week: one of my best friends was visiting which meant lots of long dinners and watching Human Planet every night and talking a lot and being laughing fools. It was also a crazy week for me at school – I had two midterms and a paper due, and managed to get to every class. He just left this morning and I had a very small panic attack when I got home to a too-quiet apartment and realized all the things I have to do and all of the energy I don’t really have to do it with. I am facing a full weekend at work, two midterms next week, and the nonstop blowing snow outside. Needless to say, I am not in a great mood.

Why am I writing all this, doing all this complaining? I can’t say, I think I just need to get it out so I can process it. I don’t want it to sound like I’m feeling really negative about my life, because I’m not. It’s just that when overwhelm sets in, as you all know, it becomes so difficult to breathe through it and put things in perspective. It is so hard, when things feel like they’re piling up, to tell yourself: “hey girl, you made it through this crazy amazing stressful wonderful week in one piece and it was grand on all counts – you deserve a little break”. Nope, instead it’s much easier to keep pushing and pushing and try to avoid feeling like I’m falling behind. But I’ll run myself into the ground that way.

As I was writing the above paragraph, I was reminded of a post I wrote about a year ago. I looked it up just to see and BOOM BOOM POW there it was: all the things I needed to tell myself today. It looks like it was the same circumstances for me when I wrote it back then: I’d been doing great, hitting all the high notes, going full steam ahead when I suddenly needed an off day. It feels awesome to be starting to recognize these patterns for myself.

When I wrote it, I called it Today, Be Gentle, and I think I’d better take my own advice. Take a look at the post, maybe some of the words will hold true for you too. Here’s a little peek:

So today, be gentle. You’re doing your best. Don’t berate yourself for not doing enough, for needing a nap, for sleeping in a bit too late, for not hitting your most important goal-of-the-day right off the bat, for eating too much or too little, for not exercising enough or too little, for not being perfect today. Be gentle. Take a minute to take stock of the positive things you’ve been doing lately. Make the voice inside your head that of your mom, or your best friend, telling you that you’re doing such a good job. There’s no rule saying that you have to bust your butt until Friday, and then have downtime. Maybe Wednesday is the low, stagnant point in your week – that’s fine too. So take it easy today. Be quiet, be still. Be gentle.

As always, thanks for listening. I always feel like we’re all muddling through this in limbo life together and it’s totally terrific. I probably just need to go make a hot cup of tea, curl up in bed and watch an episode of a silly cooking competition show and I’ll be right as rain. Have a happy Thursday and stay warm!