Today is a good day. It’s noon and I’ve got a clean house. Not just one room was an accomplishment today before I was worn out. I mean it’s one of those dishwasher is running, laundry is going, bed is actually made and there aren’t clothes scattered everywhere in varying levels of cleanliness. I even had coffee and been singing along to a rather bipolar playlist of music the entire time. Right now I’m trying to decide which crock pot recipe to make for dinner. This is not something that happens normally on a day off. Days off lately have been the desperate attempt to recharge a battery that seems to die quicker than an old iPhone.
I know that for most people this doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment. Yes, I was a functional human being today. I have a brain that is thinking about only one thing at a time and I’m accomplishing tasks one at a time as well. I’m not scattered all over and leaving a trail of half finished tasks behind me. It seems like such trivial things to be excited for. But I am. Without shame or judgement.
I have varying levels of functionality when it comes to my mental health. For days, weeks, even months at a time I can be at the highest level. On the flip side, I can also be a disaster for that amount of time. Or what feels like a disaster to me. On the outside it may look like I’m still completely functional. But I know that there’s dishes in the sink that have been there for a week or a pile of clothes that I can’t seem to ever get put away. Or there’s just opened junk mail and randomness scattered around. And on a day off, there’s me curled up in bed overthinking every moment of the past days. Wondering if I could have handled that customer interaction in a different way, thinking that somehow I didn’t validate my partner this week, guilty that I don’t have the energy to go visit my family or friends, etc.
It’s ok to be either of those sometimes. Or anything in between. Even if sometimes you have to bribe yourself with lazy time if you can just function long enough to get one task done. I struggled so long with thinking that I had to constantly “level up”. I had to constantly be making some aspect of my life better, every single day. That’s exhausting. I’m currently learning to just be content. Content in my home, myself, my job, my life, and my relationship.
I treated life like a side scroller video game with one life left for a long time. That every day was a level and I had to find something useful out of it for the next ones. And that my score damned well better be higher than when I started. And often times I moved through those days with the same monotony in it. Accomplish goals as quick as possible with the highest score possible and be done. My life was as two dimensional as that side scroller as well.
These days I try to think of it more like a new gen open world adventure. I’ve got missions I have to complete but I can get around to it when I want. There’s tons of side quests that might not help move the story along but they can be fun and give you cool stuff. And sometimes you just wander through and appreciate the environment around you.
And in that spirit, I’m gonna go enjoy our new living room for a while. Whether you’re just surviving through the days or you’re at a high level functioning state….. Take care of yourself. And just be a little kinder to yourself today, in even the smallest of ways.
In Progress 