I’m Exhausted.
Life is organized chaos these days. One 15 minute tele-health appointment, not even one that belongs to my foursome, has a domino effect demolishing the entire day. My dad needed a quick consult last week, and the only time available was 8am. He’s the one who takes J to school when I’m working, so you can see where this is going. It all worked out fine, but the mental gymnastics to-get-to-this-“fineness” were exhausting. I’m exhausted.
By the end of the week I found myself saying something like, “Oh you know, we’re just waiting on a couple sets of potentially-life-changing medical reports, but the weekend was pretty ordinary.” [Sidenote, everyone is ok, no need for alarm].
Then today I had a lightbulb moment. I’m exhausted because my baseline, or what I consider normal, is not a state of calm. It’s a state of relative calm, otherwise stated as no new chaos. Things that I take for granted as part of my baseline include:
Caring for at-least-1 human in the middle of the night
Coordinating the intersecting schedules of 6 unique individuals
Finding socialization opportunities for a toddler in a pandemic
Keeping a 5 year old busy and engaged in a pandemic
Making daily COVID-risk-assessments for our entire bubble
Supporting extended family who live with scary diagnoses
Picking up slack when my husband’s injuries flare up
None of this is unique to me, and this list is much longer for many MANY people. I can only assume that those individuals are also flippin’ exhausted.
Now we all have head colds, and this counts as new chaos. No fever, but we’re all intermittently stuffy, achy, grouchy… and I’m just exhausted. My offering (to myself, and to you) is a short list of things that help:
Going outside (preferably in the morning when it’s still cool)
Putting on outside-clothes (see above)
Tickling the littles with my nose
Watching cute animal videos
And, taking my daily anxiety medication
Thank goodness I’m just exhausted. But um, how much longer? Also, are we there yet??
[with ‘there’ being a mythical world where COVID vaccines are available for all]
